Every May, for the last 70 years or so, a #dinghy sailing #race takes place on #West #Kirby Marine lake. Teams from around the #world compete, with over 300 races over a 3 day period. It is an exciting, #dramatic and fast moving event, full of movement and #colour.
Except this year, it wasn't. I went down on the Saturday morning to take some #action photographs, to be presented with a flat calm scene, mirror like water, and crews playing tennis on the banks of the marina instead.
Ranks of colourful sailboats parked next to the jetty on a mirror lake gave opportunities for great reflection photographs, but did little to convey the drama and excitement of the water-based racing.
Fortunately, however, I had packed my #ND and #polarising filters which meant I had the gear to dabble with my favourite photography style – #ICM or Intentional Camera Movement (or, as I like to call it, Shaky Camera Shots). This involves longer exposures of ½ to 1 second, or longer, and moving the camera during the #exposure. The technique leads to blurred and elongated images, with heightened saturation and #dramatic colour palates as the colours of the subject and its surrounds #blend together. The result produces #impressionist images not unlike the paintings of artists like Turner. As you can see from the examples, the photographs are substantially different from the reality, and as a consequence, different from the vast majority of standard shots. An alternative ICM technique is to #zoom the shot during the exposure. A so-called “Zoom Burst” will produce lines and streaks which will give the illusion of movement, which you can see below – the zoom burst shot was taken at about the same time as the mirror shot.
When employing this #technique, I tend to use apertures as narrow as possible for two reasons: firstly, it might negate the need for ND filters and secondly, the subject stays crisp and sharp despite the #movement. Too many ICM pictures are soft and blurry, making it look like the camera has been dropped accidentally during the exposure, because of wide apertures. Wider apertures would be perfect for standard shots, but can fail badly with ICM.
However, on a bright day filters will be needed – ND and/or polarising filters – to get pictures which are not so over exposed as to be useless.
Be warned: narrow apertures on a bright day will highlight every speck of dust on your lens or your filters, meaning a lot of spot removal!
Expect to take loads of pictures and delete almost all of them as you learn this technique. Only a couple will have that “wow” factor. Processing is normally straightforward. Exposure and contrast adjustment, large doses of added clarity and texture, and a little bit of extra saturation, depending upon your taste. Cropping to get the best composition and a little sharpening, and there you have it.
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