Intentional Camera Movement (ICM)

Humber Fish Co., Humber Street

ICM is not new in photography and has often been used in the past to create more complex, dreamlike and painterly images to counter-balance some of the increasing sharply focussed work often on display.

Intentional Camera Movement is what it says and involves the photographer moving the camera during a long exposure to create something slightly other worldly. The impact can be very boring and look like a slightly out of focussed amateur attempt, very abstract or stunningly beautiful and Turneresque. There are some very experienced experts out there who, by their own admission, may take hundreds of shots to get the one or two they are looking for.

I have had my interest renewed in the nature and practie of ICM following a conversation with another photographer, Iain Cairns when we met for a coffee recently and a link he sent me to the work of Andrew S Gray in Northumberland whose work you can see here :- https://andrewsgray.photography/ . Very atmospheric!!

I am miles away from anything like having the skill of Andrew but I also think that increasing my repertoir is as essential as using the full facilities of my camera. So I have set out to practice with ICM and these pictures are the first taken over the last week. I have a long way to go.

I have not attempted to do very much post editing with them as I wish to get the balance right first between what can be seen and what can be hinted at. This essentially means how much or how little movement I get into the shot and that is practice and good luck. The greater the movement the more abstracted the picture. I have certainly learned that having some point of focus helps and that usually minimal movement makes a more understandable picture. Equally a lot of movement can give a very pleasing abstract effect and result in unpredicatble colour swatches in the final photo.

In addition I decided to experiment with a technique I have been using for some time now and utilising my camera's ability to take up to twelve photographs and merge them in-camera to gain an overlayed result. Again I have learned so far to work with two imposed images and ICM but not more.

The basic camera set-up varies depending on the weather. A very bright and sunny day will allow much more play than a dark and stormy one and the colour palette on the final photos will be very different. In order to reduce the light entering the camera you also need a variable Neutral Density Filter. These allow you to make speedy changes to the light entering the lense. I have usually set the ISO on the camera to 100 (which in itself can require a longer exposure) and set the timer to anything from half a second to considerably longer. I can then marginally adjust the ND filter, the timing or the ISO to improve results...but it is hit and miss to some degree although if you stand in one place and take a number of photographs it is likely you will get nearer to the result you want with each picture taken - unless the sun goes in or pops out again!

My experiments have taken me into the city and countryside over the last ten days and you can decide which you like best from these shots below. I will post again on this topic in the coming months as I learn more and use increasingly different methods to achieve my results. Comments are welcomed - and remember if you don't wish to miss any of my blogs you can always pop your email into the top right hand box and then you will get a reminder when I post ! You can also reverse that process if you get fed-up with me!