It’s also important to mention some other details about the images: what kind of images you can expect to find here.
I’ve discovered this amazing site, Orbit Trap, and I agree with their thoughts and views in many points and by reading some of these posts I decided to restart/resume my fractal creations. At some point in a certain post about “art” (or something) there they mention how most of the more appreciated images (in art “communities” sites like Deviant Art) by a certain “respected” group of fractal artists (doesn’t an amateur artist deserves respect as well?) aren’t really fractals. As mentioned in a certain previous post here, to be considered a fractal the image must have certain technical qualities (the more, the most “pure” a fractal is, I suppose), and to me, the most important visual characteristic of a fractal is the self-similarity. Whenever I see one image with that characteristic, immediately I tend to associate it with a fractal – be it just a picture of a cauliflower or something done in Ultra Fractal.
They call these “busy” images just eye-candy, not fractals, and therefore they shouldn’t be considered good fractals, perhaps just good digital art at most. I have to agree with that, some images are just too “alive” and detailed that they catch your attention almost immediately. But I don’t agree entirely with the point that a fractal must be that “pure” to be good or even to be considered a “fractal”. You can create good work with fractals, perhaps even using part of them that don’t display explicit fractal characteristics, but they are still fractals. If they are still “pure” fractals (what is a “pure” fractal anyway?) I’ll let for you to decide or care about.
Kind of mixing both of these concepts, this is what more or less you will find here. Although I appreciate (better say I respect more than appreciate) most of these images that are amazing jobs of patience and skills, you will barely find images like for example an accurate reproduction of a painting in fractal format, images carefully thought or assembled in a way to appear they are for example a specific object or scenario – think of a fractal that is like a Mona Lisa reproduction, or that looks as close as possible as say the Pisa tower or a Ferrari or crazy stuff like that. I don’t have neither the patience nor the technique to do that, mostly the patience I guess. Besides that it’s not really my cup of tea.
On the other hand, you might find some images here that aren’t recognizable as “pure” (typical) fractal imagery, at first at least. But, to me, as they were created using a fractal software, using a fractal formula, I don’t see why they can’t be considered a fractal. Just don’t expect anything done just to impress – it’s quite easy to make a very colourful image in almost seconds, but do I like that image? If I do, it’s posted. If not, trash bin for it.
99.9% of my images that might resemble some specific stuff happened just by accident, I never did any image planning to do something specific, not that I can recall at least. If some kind of shape that resembles an animal or a tree or a flower or something else appears, I’d maybe go that way and even name the image according to that (see the next post) and add other parts to the image that “fit” with that image’s “theme”.
In very few cases, some images were done just more for fun or as an exercise to test some (powerful) UF feature or something, like this:
A good example of a busy image
Fun and complicated to do, but no thanks.
Also, to me it doesn’t need to be created with a text line command in some obscure operational system or use a very nerdy formula combination to be considered a good fractal. As I’ve mentioned before, I use several different softwares, each has some particular stuff that much probably the others don’t have or if they do it’s more complicated to work with that using them. Also, I’ll never make an image because of the specific mathematical characteristics of a specific formula or something like that. I have no idea about what’s going on “behind the curtains” of a fractal formula, I have no knowledge of the involved math whatsoever, my math knowledge stopped when I left high school or something (despite my last name being the same as one very known mathematician!). Therefore I don’t care if a formula represents an important theory or concept, if it doesn’t produce good images, I won’t use it.
Another difficult subject are the spirals. Hated by some, loved by some. I like them a lot. So, if you hate them, not my problem. They are part of the fractal world, but as they were overused, they started to look “common” and are hated by some. Honestly, I hate this stamp image more than any of my one-layered spirals, but it was kept just for fun, to demonstrate (poorly, I must confess) what kind of crazy stuff can be done other than “pure fractals”.
Did I say “one layer”? OK, that’s another difficult point. Some people say that if there’s more than one layer in a fractal image, it’s not a fractal anymore but it’s more like a Photoshop image than a fractal. Others say that an image doesn’t have quality if it doesn’t have at least a certain number of layers. I prefer to ignore all this. One layer, 50 layers, whatever fits the image is what I’ll be using. But – and a big BUT here – I don’t like to use “external tools” to make a fractal, like for example the new image manipulation tools in the new UF version. Never tried that, never will. Same applies for post-processing (aka “enhanced with Photoshop”).
All this rant is about one of the reasons that made me stop making fractals for a while. I was trying to make stuff that fit into that specific group of people’s likings, and I was forgetting one important detail: ME. I was making things that I was quite unhappy with, so why keep doing it? After reading some of these posts at Orbital Trap, I’ve changed my mind and came back and I’m enjoying my new images as much as when I’ve started.
Basically, that’s it. If you came here looking for eye-candy images, maybe you’ll find something. If you came just to see and appreciate my work, welcome.
Related Images:
