By Gary Campbell

Each weekday morning, we pick a recent image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It’s our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve!
Today we’re trying something a little different with The Daily Photoist by featuring two images by different photographers. The two were added to our Flickr pool at roughtly the same time, and each takes a decidedly different approach to abstraction. There seemed (on the surface anyway) to have enough in common to give them the ol’ grade-school compare-n-contrast treatment.

This first image, “Green smoke” by sevennine (Marc Hodges), is the result of some involved studio experimentation and some time spent in in Photoshop. As the photographer describes in his notes, the smoke is from two incense sticks on a milk crate, set up in front of a black poster-board background. Once he captured the right moment, the image was white smoke on black was inverted and then coloured green to achieve the desired effect. (Images like this one prove that Photoshop can indeed be used well, when in the hands of a talented user.)

By contrast, this very abstract-looking “Spraypaint on the lightpole” image by Gavatron (Gavan Watson) is straight out of the camera with no manipulations. We love how it reminds us of that weird ending sequence of the movie 2001, just at that moment when Dave communicates with the monolith and the theatre audience all drop acid. (And then there’s that surreal sequence with the old man and the baby, and who knows what the hell is going on at that point.)