ICM

Intentional camera movement and nothing to do with missiles. I didn’t even know it had a name until I heard someone talking about it. It used to be something that happened by accident, or you were Ernst Haas.

The trigger was looking at some pictures by Keith Snell. He’s been using a lot of intentional blurring and I liked the results. It’s also where I first heard it had a name. I’d done a few blurries in the past (easier to say than ICM) but not made much of it.

I’d also had a go at the Ernst Haas thing, directly influenced by his picture of a matador.

Everyone has done the fairground rides at night, with the motion of the rides streaking into wheels and arcs. Try taking your camera on the ride instead.

This could have done with a lick of flash to show my mate’s face a bit better

I’ve also got a Spinner camera, that pulls the film past a slot behind the lens as the camera rotates. But if you hold the camera still and let the mechanism spin, you get a long streak of blur.

While movement is easy with a digital camera, double exposure isn’t. Except it turns out it can be. My dSLR has a feature that I believe many have, of combining multiple exposures in-camera. I thought it was a feature that could reduce noise in dark scenes or at high ISO. But I now know it can be used just like double or multiple exposure on film. On my camera you have to set it up first by telling it how many exposures to combine and whether the exposures are additive or should be averaged together. But these are just settings to be experimented with.

This was taken with multiple exposures to build up enough light when using a simple camera.

I am liking some of the results though. Just to point out that these were made with a camera phone app rather than using the dSLR, as it’s more convenient.

Nice pastel shades and a bit Impressionist.

I quite like the effect of building a predominant colour and leaving the detail low. I’ve done some black and white prints previously that were toned to match the wall they were on. I might write about that too – photography as interior design – who’d a thunk it?

Anyway, what I need to be clear about is that I have no intention of copying another photographers’ work. What I want to do is learn their technique so that I can use it for my own pictures. It’s another tool in the box. If I may quote the inestimable Neil Gaiman “we all swipe when we start. We trace, we copy, we emulate. But the most important thing is to get to the place where you’re telling your own stories, painting your own pictures, doing the stuff that no-one else could have done but you”.

Still trying.

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