Do not adjust your set by Clare Gadsby
Over the past week I’ve been re-flirting with intentional camera movement (icm). I like how this technique brings movement, life and energy to my photographic images, often making me view my subjects in a different, unique and creative way.
For this effect I choose a small aperture (this means a larger f-stop) and very low ISO to give me a slow shutter speed. It’s easier to try it out on a dark, overcast day than in full summer sunshine. Then I move the camera, up and down, side to side, round and round, and see what happens … There might be lots of blur, a little blur, no blur at all, and it’s at these times that I’m grateful for the digital era, as many of my images are deleted when I’m playing with icm. But, as so often with creative exercises, the journey is a huge part of the fun. Sometimes I want the original subject to be identifiable, such as a garden scene, or a macro capture of a flower. Sometimes I’ll go full abstract and lose any hint of what I was originally looking at. Sometimes I use a blur filter in Photoshop to create this effect, which can be very pleasing, and has none of the hit and miss quality of in-camera icm, but there’s something very satisfying about standing there and capturing it in the moment.
Here’s a rainy autumnal day on a Cotswolds lane, where I stood in the wet waiting for a car to approach, as you do when you’re a photographer
Sitting above Bronte beach near Sydney, Australia, watching people walking down to the water
If you’re lucky enough to have a chauffeur (Mr G) driving up France you can use the same camera settings mentioned above, and the speed at which you’re whizzing along will provide the icm effect (the foreground is the motorway crash barrier)
And this week’s inspiration came from the garden
And a bouquet of flowers sent by my lovely sons. Here I converted the icm image to black and white, took it into Photoshop, duplicated the original and played around with the blend modes, which brought me to this unexpected final picture
Clare Gadsby – September 2020
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