ICM

Hi all... have been experimenting with ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) a fair bit over the last few months... reasons are various, but mostly to do with curiosity, trying to find a way of finding some beauty in the city, and more generally simply trying to find another way to look at things, ...

Below are a selection of shots from the last 6 months... a new departure and technique for me, this, so genuinely interested in all reactions/C&C to them...

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10.



As I say, interested in all responses...

Thanks for looking...

Best

Several members of my camera club employ this approach to great effect. It can work very well and IMHO you have got it in nos. 2, 7 & 9. I find the others less effective to varying degrees.

My only suggestion - if you enjoy the results, then keep at it and you'll get more 'keepers'.

Phil

So set shake reduction to 'off' then I think 2, 6 & 7 are the most efffective - seems to work best where the whole frame is blurred more equally. You've done a great job with these!

I think these are great! Never seen a clothes line look so good, positively Turneresque.

How are you actually doing it?
I understand the camera is being moved during the exposure but how much and for how long? Is there much done after exposure?

Hi Bill,

For me, I can only relate to those images where I can work out (or have a good guess) at what the subject is in the photo. Therefore, 3,4,5,6,9 and 10 work well for me. 1,2,7 & 8 confuse me as I don't know what I am supposed to see in the picture.

Regards
Nigel

I really like these..very novel to be doing it intentionally. My favourites are in order of preference...2.5,7. Would make nice wall art if enlarged.

Like Bob i'd be interested in the production specifics...might try it myself.

karlo

The best of these are wall-hanging good. It is perhaps a measure of yr success that Bob (above) thought he saw a washing line. (There isn't one, is there?!)

2, 3 (particularly 3), 7, and 9 get my vote. The blur on the horse, eg, is less successful: looks as though it could merely be a bad case of camera wobble.

I think this is a really interesting exploration Bill. #2 is my clear pick, due to the colour palette and light and the relatively straightforward feel of the image. #7 I am least enamoured with, I think because I find it a very disjunct image. But that really is the nature of this sort of beast - very different personal reactions, and those reactions might change with mood, time spent looking at them etc etc. What is great is seeing them all together like this.

2, 3 and 5 do it for me

The ones that work best for me are 1, 4 & 9, which are the ones with more muted colour and lower contrast. The mood seems to suit the blur better. I really like the subject matter of 6 but the bright patch distracts. The others I find a little too hard to view, especially the horse with the ghosting. The sombre and faded industrial look though I think works well.

Thanks very much all for thoughts and feedback...

Firstly, Christopher's right... sadly no washing line that I can remember in these... Think it might be a very blurry set of rooftops if it's No.7 you were thinking of Bob...! Mind you, one of the things I do like about this technique is that it does get the imagination going, which can only be a good thing...

Bob and Karlo, the technique is essentially handheld long exposures, whilst deliberately moving the camera. For me, the most effective time lengths have been anything between 0.5 sec and 8 secs... any shorter and there tends to be not quite enough blur. Any longer, and you tend to lose all form in the picture (although there may be times when you want to do that).

To get that, I'll probably use a polariser and 3 stop (maybe even 6 stop) nd stacked, with something like f22 for daylight. I do pretty much everything in camera... a bit of post to bring out contrast (and some of the colour in the houses on No. 7), but nothing major...

It's essentially hit and miss... I've literally taken thousands of these over the last 6 months... what's interesting is that I've found that standard photographic givens (the importance of light, composition) often still apply (the importance of light in particular), mind you sometimes they don't!

You get different effects depending on what you're looking for, and specifically HOW/HOW MUCH you move the camera (up and down, side to side, diagonals, circles, hold it still-ish and then move it towards the end of the exposure, the list is basically endless). I usually tend to move the camera inches, but if it's a big panning shot ( eg No.7), then feet.

What I have found interesting though is that it tends to work best for me when I end up with an IMPRESSION of a something... so that you end up uncovering something in the light/view/object that you're taking a picture of which isn't necessarily obvious with the naked eye, but which is nevertheless compelling... I've found it's quite easy to take a whole load of shots which are a bit blurry but don't really say anything... the tricky bit, for me, is trying to uncover a HIDDEN something in the subject... when I hit upon something that starts to look interesting to me, I'll keep shooting and fine tuning until I have a version of it which I'm happy with...

My only real piece of advice would be to try it and see... the learning curve is quite quick, and you can get pretty interesting results pretty fast...

A few people who are worth looking out for are Chris Friel link, who started off as a painter, Doug Chinnery link, and Russ Barnes link...

Hope that's useful...

Best

1, 4, 5 and 10 for me but they all have a lot of interest. Bob used the word Turneresque and that came my mind also. The blurred colours look great but the mono horse is also very effective.
David

PPG: http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/artists/davidtrout

have tried this in the past but with nothing like the success you have with this set, 1,3,4 and 9 are my favourites would be hard pressed to pick one, the horse is the one i like least.

Bill, these are rather good a very interesting experiment in creating abstracism from photograph.

For me 2,3,4 and 9 are the standouts.

It can also get interesting when SR goes wrong



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