What If…
Sandhill Cranes coming in for a landing at Bosque del Apache. 1/10 of a second at F7.1, 600mm.
Eddie Soloway, one of my favorite photo workshop instructors, encourages his students to ask What If? What if you tried something different during the exposure? What if you move the camera? What if you deliberately leave things out of focus? What if you try multiple exposures? What if? “What ifs” offer a playground of experiments and discovery that can help get the creative juices flowing.
What if you move the camera during exposure?
When Intentional Camera Movement got its own acronym (ICM) , with its own hashtag, I knew it had hit the big time, even though this technique is as old as photography itself. If you haven’t played with moving the camera during your exposure (I can’t bring myself to write the abbreviation), I encourage you to explore. While trees and vertical camera movement are the classic examples, don’t limit yourself. What if you pan horizontally across trees? Hint, you’ll probably be disappointed with the result. What if you move the camera in an arc as I did with the photo above of sandhill cranes? There are no right or wrong ways to move the camera. There are subjects and light that lend themselves to this technique more than others. For example, a bright day generally doesn’t permit a long enough exposure to get much camera movement. Also, in most cases, camera movement works better if it parallels the subject matter. Think vertical on trees, horizontal on water and ocean, two of the more common subjects for camera movement. Play, discover what works and what doesn’t.
What if you move your feet during exposure?
Don’t limit yourself to just moving the camera though. While I was walking down a trail, I admired how the trail disappeared into the woods and wondered. What if take an exposure while walking down the trail; keep the camera relatively still, but move my feet? I experimented with different trail locations, different shutter speeds, and came back with some shots I liked. The image below was taken walking along the Calf Creek Falls trail in Grand Staircase Escalante, walking through horsehair ferns (green) and cottonwoods (yellow) with an exposure of 2.5 seconds
Walking down a trail in Grand Staircase Escalante. 2.5 second exposure at F22 while walking down a trail
What if I walk through a field of bluebonnets at rabbit level? The image below, taken at 1/4 seconds, adds energy to the bluebonnets.
Walking through a field of bluebonnets. 1/4 second at F22, 24mm
What if your subject isn’t in focus?
Most of us learned to have our main subject tack sharp, which is definitely good advice for much of your photography. But if you are trying to convey color and form only, tack sharp may not be what you are after. What if you have things slightly out of focus? The color and graceful form of the Lotus Flower below is what caught my eye so I experimented with different degrees of focus on the flower.
Lotus Flower
What if you change your focus during exposure?
You mean I can manually focus my camera? Most of us have come to rely heavily on our camera’s advanced autofocus features that we forget the creative possibilities the manual focus ring can offer. While I was experimenting with focus, I paid closed attention to how the subject appeared both when in-focus and when thrown out of focus. Again, playing the what if game I asked, what would happen if I changed the focus during the exposure, basically combining the two views? It can create some interesting effects as shown in the Yellow Rose photograph below, which appears much softer than a normal tack sharp photography would be. The exposure was 5 seconds; the first two seconds sharp, approximately one second turning the focus ring and then 2 seconds out of focus.
Yellow rose with different focus points during exposure
I have played with this technique in other images to create an interesting aura around a subject like in the tulip photograph below. Yes, I know this can be done done in Photoshop more precisely. I have nothing against Photoshop and use it regularly, but given a choice I like to try to accomplish things in camera rather than in post processing.
Tulip with multiple focus points during exposure
What if you take multiple exposures in one frame?
I remember experimenting with multiple exposures on my first Olympus OM-1 film camera, and decided to explore it again in different scenarios and treatments.
I was shooting dandelions for another project; I admired both the yellow blooms and the white seeds—the suns and the moons as Nabokov described them—and decided to try to capture both in a single photo. A 2-frame multiple exposure, one frame of a dandelion in bloom and the second in seed, created an interesting image.
Blooming and spent dandelion in one multiple exposure
I also enjoy bird photography and am always thinking about new and different ways to photograph wildlife. The photo below is a three-frame multiple exposure of a Blue-winged Teal coming in for a landing in Port Aransas, Texas.
Multiple Exposure of Blue-winged Teal coming in for a landing
A third multiple-exposure technique is to achieve a more abstract or impressionistic image. I hand-held a three frame multiple exposure that let the subtle movement between frames create the impressionistic effect. As I mentioned earlier, this can easily and more precisely be done in Photoshop, but I enjoy shooting more than processing.
Three frame multiple exposure of autumn leaves at Capital Reef National Park
I’m a firm believer that photography is an outdoor activity, not a behind the computer activity. Playing “what if” lets you have fun and see the world in different ways. And seeing the world in different ways, and communicating that vision, is what photography is all about.