“Rock Star”

I lacked a bit of inspiration today. I wandered around at home aimlessly without really ‘seeing’ anything. It probably went on like this for 20 minutes or so until I finally spotted someting. It wasn’t much, and it was something that is ordinarily seen as ugly or imperfect.

Sometimes the concept of transforming something ugly or imperfect into something beautiful is also referred to as Wabi-Sabi.

This is a very intriguing concept and if you want to study the idea of Wabi-Sabi in more details I recommend that you pick up Leonard Koren’s book Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers. It’s an excellent read.

I also discuss Wabi-Sabi in my 5-day FREE e-course which you can sign up for in the sidebar to the right.

I have also written a post titled Photographing Impermanence which also touches on the subject of Wabi-Sabi.

Anyway, it was the scratches on the otherwise beautiful, painted and laquered wooden surface of my wife’s guitar that caught my eye.

When I looked closer I really like the random – somewhat wild – pattern that these scratches created. It gave the acoustic guitar a little bit of a “Rock Star” touch.

I made several images, horizontal and vertical, with and without the curves of the rings around the sound hole. In the end I settled for the version above because I like how the curves of the rings both seem to balance and contrast with the scratches.

I’m quite quite happy with the result after what was a slow and somewhat uninspired start to get going today.

If you liked this article, you may also like these:

• At Home: “Beyond Beautiful”
• At Home: The Final Edit
• At Home: “Light Sculpture”