Editor’s Note: 500px NEXT is a new Special Feature we’re debuting here on 500px ISO. NEXT stands for Noteworthy, Emerging, eXpressive, and Tenacious: the four characteristics that every artist labeled a “500px NEXT” photographer has in spades.
Their work inspires, pushes boundaries, and sits at the bleeding edge of photography’s latest trends and techniques. If you think you deserve to be featured as a 500px NEXT photographer, or you know someone who does, send me an email at dl@500px.com.
Tom Scott is unlike anybody we’ve yet featured on 500px NEXT… which is kind of the point of this feature. He’s not a portraitist, or a cityscape shooter, or a young photographer blazing a fresh millennial trail—he’s an abstract photographer.
The photos he takes don’t require excessive funds, excessive traveling, or even an excessive obsession with what gear is in his bag. What they do require is an excessively developed photographic eye, and a crap ton (to use the technical term) of patience.
It’s part of what made Tom fall in love with abstracts. “I found this is a genre where you don’t have to have lots of travel money. You don’t even need fancy equipment,” he tells us. “But you do need lots of patience.”
A photo like the image above from his award-winning Sand Vision series, for example, is the result of over 300 trips to the beach, most totally fruitless and yielding not a single keeper.
And his metal photos—often of rust or chipping paint or some other weathered and worn surface that could just as easily be an aerial shot from thousands of feet in the air—are well within the reach of his car and budget… although some flexibility is required:
Most of the places I go to for my metal and glass portfolios are from 90 minutes to 5 hours away by car. Sometimes I feel like a contortionist, squeezing in between two parked trucks, setting up my tripod in some weird angle to get a new image.
What really makes Tom’s images stand out, however, is the intent behind them. “Once the image is on my screen, I try to see if it speaks to me metaphorically,” Tom tells us. “Generally, if an image only has nice lines or color or shape, but nothing else, I won’t publish it.”
It’s only once he feels a clear message or metaphor is present that he will move on to editing the image—a process he calls “painstaking,” as he draws in curves or contrast adjustments with a 5 pixel brush!
It’s that kind of dedication that sets Tom (and the rest of the 500px NEXT photographers we’ve featured) apart. Photography with a message—whether that message is painted on a subject’s expression, on a cityscape’s glittering lights, or, in Tom’s case, on the side of a dilapidated old truck.
Here’s a look at more of the beautiful abstract photography in his portfolio:
Selecting just a few images from Tom’s extensive portfolio to feature was a real challenge! Be sure to follow him on 500px to see everything he’s capturing on a day to day basis.
And if you really love his work, you can also find him on his website and Instagram.
Leave a reply