You might think that photography is nothing more than pushing a button to capture what happened to be in front of the camera. Indeed a majority of the snapshots taken today seem to be nothing more than a capture of what was in front of the camera. Unfortunately these images are seldom compelling, interesting, or worth a second look.

The art in photography, as it is in any of the visual arts, is to find the image in the world around us. Any visual artist takes a small part of the world and abstracts or isolates it. The only difference between the various visual arts is the set of tools and techniques available to abstract that slice of reality.

I presented myself with a challenge. I started by taking a photograph of what happened to be in front of my camera; my desk. As I expected, this was not a very interesting picture. No one would be tempted to put it on their wall.

I then tried to find the images hidden in that broad view of my desk. I looked for something there that was interesting to look at. Then I played with lenses, angles and some post-processing to isolate what I had found and turn it into an interesting image.

I found this much harder than I thought it would be. Perhaps the constraint that the image had to be within this one view of the world was too narrow.

Below are some of the images I found. Let me know in the comments if you think that any of them are successful.

You can  also check out images found in the kitchen.