Rust Capacitor

In the stillness of decay, a forgotten machine finds its pulse.

DIGITAL ARTABSTRACTTEXTURED PHOTOGRAPHY

Fran

10/2/20243 min read

When I began this project, to be honest, I didn’t have many expectations or big hopes. In fact, I’m already feeling the urge to go out and hunt for new textures to work with.
That’s why I was browsing through the folders where I store the files from my camera, looking for discarded photos or textures. And I found exactly what I needed. Toward the end of gathering textures for my first collection, I passed by the place where an old printing shop used to be. I snapped a photo of one of the old machines (or what’s left of it) that has been sitting abandoned on the sidewalk for some time. I thought it could make for an interesting subject for a project, but I ended up forgetting about the photo while preparing that first collection.

The circular structure of the mechanism and its rusted state inspired me to try something with a steampunk aesthetic. I immediately removed the background from the image, leaving only the circular structure, and duplicated the layer multiple times, arranging four in the corners of the image, and another four, scaled down to a fraction of their size, forming a cross along the vertical and horizontal axes of the composition. The idea was to suggest a more complex mechanism. Most of the layers were blended using the Darken Only mode.
Next, to emphasize the decay of the metal, I added a rust texture and another of moss. For color and patina, I added two metal textures and one of a yellow wall, which, when combined with the LCH Chroma mode, gave the composition a rather psychedelic look. Here are some of those textures:

It looked good, but despite the number of layers I had stacked up, it still felt like something was missing—a lot, in fact:

old printer
old printer

I let the composition sit for a couple of days, and with fresh ideas, I came back to it.

What was missing was the sense that this mechanism was functioning rather than just sitting there in a static state. I imported a light trail texture that I had used in other works, and that’s when everything began to make sense. I duplicated and flipped that layer, so the light seemed to radiate from the center. I also added the texture of a shade cloth, that gave the look of a metallic grid in front of the mechanism. Then, a “smoke” texture (which isn’t actually smoke, but a wall I photographed with a blurred motion) added the final touch, making the mechanism look like it was operating.

The result vaguely reminded me of Dr. Emmett Brown’s “Flux Capacitor,” so I decided to call the piece finished.
Well, at least until the next morning, when I woke up with an idea... I remembered my piece "Rustborne Parasite" and thought that the rusted corrugated pipe might play a good role in this project.

rusted metal texture
rusted metal texture
light trail texture
light trail texture
shade cloth texture
shade cloth texture
blur texture
blur texture

I imported that texture and, after several copies, flips, and rotations, I finally felt the piece was complete, and fittingly titled it “Rust Capacitor.”

corrugated, rusted pipe
corrugated, rusted pipe
Rust Capacitor, digital art by Fran de Souza
Rust Capacitor, digital art by Fran de Souza
moss texture
moss texture
yellow wall texture
yellow wall texture
first stage of the composition
first stage of the composition