One of the many fun things about photography is how many genres there are to quench your soul. For some people it’s all about portrait work, or sports, birds, nature or macro. For some it’s about all the things! For many of us it’s a constant need to learn new things, returning to the old from time to time to help us recharge from a rut or revisit something that brought us peace. Often, one genre just naturally leads to another and while we haven't given up on the past, we embrace the new with zest. I’m finding a new outlet for my creativity by experimenting with abstract photography and more specifically intentional camera movement (ICM).
Slot Canyon, near Paige AZ
Corolla, OBX, South Carolina
Flowers in my yard.
I don’t know about you but I love my macro work. It started with a need to practice the basics of learning how to shoot in manual mode on my camera. Flowers don’t move. They always have time for you. And they never complain. To tell you the truth, the older they get the more interesting they can become, They’re all full of texture, and curves and curls and deep color. Those textures and curves help you learn about light and shadow. Having learned the basics with flowers I moved outside to landscapes and finding beauty in my backyard. I’m to that point again where I crave something new and different.
Abstract photography is something that been around for a while. It’s something I used to walk past on a gallery wall because I didn’t truly understand the artist’s intention. Now though, I find it to be something that exercises my mind. It makes me spend time within the image. It feeds my curiousity. It makes me think about what I’m seeing.
I recently tried to find the definition of abstract photography and while there are many versions of it depending on where you look I found this from mymodernmet.com that helps to explain my view of abstract work. “…….abstraction takes place when a photographer focuses in on a fragment of a natural scene, isolating it from its context. By zeroing in on the color, texture, line, shape, geometry, symmetry, or reflection of a scene, that photographer warps our perception of the real world and familiar objects.” This resonates with how see abstract photography.
One of the techiques to achieve abstract photography is ICM. You need a long shutter speed and you move the camera while the shutter open to intentionally create a blurred image. There are some subjects that work well and are easy to achieve such as the ocean at sunrise or birch trees with their long white trucks. After that it gets a little more challenging to find that perfect movement. The fun is in the trying. Yes, there can be some failing or learning, at least, what not to do again. But never say “never” because on a different day in a different light with a different subject, it might just work.
There’s no limit to what subjects you can use for ICM. People. Landscape. Cityscape. Seascape. Nature. Flowers. Lights. It’s all fair game, as long as you’re being ethical and responsible in your techniques when creating your work. .
For the second image I used my Lensbaby Velvet 28 and for the last I used my Velvet 56. I love the soft blur I get with these when shooting wide open but I wasn’t shooting that way when I took these. I didn’t have the right light to do that. You also, don’t have to shoot ICM with a Lensbaby, but it’s definitely an option! If you’re at curious about what ICM I encourage you to explore a little online and find some artists who do this well. I’ll share more about the technical aspects in another blog post but for now, go exploring. Find some ICM work and then tell me “what did you see?”
I’ll leave you with two of my recent ICM images. What do you see?