I know it’s been over two months since my last post. Unfortunately, my personal life has taken a bit of a beating lately. I really can’t go into too many details, but suffice it to say that my mother passed away in February and then other family stuff followed on the heels of that. It forced me to spend some time away from my camera and, instead, deal with personal issues.

Prior to my mother’s passing, I had a perfect record submitting to 52 Frames, my weekly photography group.  For over two years — 110 weeks in a row — a submitted a picture based on the weekly theme, no matter what was happening in my life.  As hectic as my life might have been, I always managed to submit a picture, even if it was just a quick snapshot.

Unfortunately, since then, I have not been as consistent.  I only submitted three times in the last eight weeks and, even then, it was often just a half-hearted effort.

However, my life is beginning to stabilize itself again and, I’m hoping, I can begin to concentrate more on my photography again.

Last week’s theme for 52 Frames was Abstract.  Normally, when I work a 52 Frames shot, I usually plan out the shot and then execute it (doing a great job or else failing miserably).  I rarely have “alternate” shots.  This week, however, was quite different.  This week I went to Bryant Park in New York City and began looking for different textures and patterns that would make for interesting abstract pictures.  I photographed various tree barks (including a peeling tree bark which became the shot I submitted) as well as various stone, metal and wood surfaces.  I also took some shots of geometric patterns formed by the windows of buildings around Bryant Park.

In addition, after post-processing some of them, I experimented with combining them into different compositions.  When you examine the pictures below, you’ll notice that some of them are combinations of others in the set.

This is the shot that I ended up submitting:

This is a shot of some tree bark, which, after some manipulation in Photoshop and using Topaz Labs, became the abstract you see here.

My alternate shots are below:

So, what do you think?  Did I submit the right shot?  Or would you have gone with a different one?  Let me know.  I’d love to hear from you.