Tight Cropping Towards Abstraction

I have a particular interest in making tightly cropped shots of engines and cars. By removing the totality or the easily recognizable form of the engine, I hope to highlight the individual components, both for their own sake as interesting elements of an image, and as a form of abstraction.

Here I want to focus on two shots. One is by Alex Ramos (his pBase gallery here), whose work I enjoy viewing. The other is one of my own.

Alex's shot (captioned version here) offers an interesting contrast. At the bottom, a bit to the right of center, is a round element with interesting detail (cool "EMD") and texture. The round shape and its flat position relative to the viewer contrast with the remainder of the image, which is a set of various lines that project to a vanishing point off the top edge of the frame. There is sufficent detail to make it easily recognizeable as an engine nose, but nonetheless quite abstract. The top of the frame has a bit of visual closure through a pair of horizontal elements, the handrail and chain.

The shot also has nice depth, using a wider angle to get the cable opening cover close yet show the rest of the nose.

My shot, by contrast (captioned version here) does not have the sense of motion conveyed by the vertical lines in Alex's. Instead, mine is a study of two round elements, the cable end (nicely standing out in a bare metal silver) and the ditch light, and the various yellows, the dominant area above complemented by the grab irons below. There are various details that add a bit of interest if not spice, such as the white sticker, the portion of the number board (with a bit of glint nearby) and the hoses and cables.

I do think my shot lacks in balance a bit. The angled view puts greater weight on the left side, but there is not enough on the right. Perhaps I should have included the knuckle, but then the framing would have been squarish and more empty space would be in the upper right. Something to work on.

By the way, don't get me wrong, I love engines! There is plenty of interesting detail in both shots to enjoy. But there is much more, especially in Alex's.

As a follow-up, here is a shot by Alex that is not, in my view, an attempt at abstraction. Rather, it simply frames the relevant part of the engine to focus on the lettering (full size here). I like the textures in the peeling paint and the color/hue is interesting also.