Playing with the Wisconsin Landscape
October 27, 2019
To close out the photographs taken in Wisconsin this summer, here are four experiments in intentional camera movement (ICM). That is, the first four are Wisconsin; the others, from the archives, are Ohio and Florida.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Romancing Reality 
I always enjoy these images, Linda. You may have developed a way to previsualize the result but for me the results are always serendipitous. #3 with that orange curve is wonderful as is the overall feel of #4.
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October 27, 2019 at 9:59 PM
These are all surprises, Mic. I did a little fooling around in Photoshop, too. The orange curve is totally Photoshop, one of the choices under Pencil. I just thought the image needed something, so I gave it something. I added the rosy blush in #2 also. But the others are pretty much a product of moving around Lightroom sliders and cropping.
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October 28, 2019 at 8:37 PM
🙂 Ah! I hadn’t considered the possibility of an external addition! Romancing Reality!
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October 29, 2019 at 11:11 AM
Oh, thank you for saying that, Mic. A while back, I worried that in altering a photograph, I was deviating from romancing reality. I did come to accept alterations to the image as a kind of romancing. But it’s good to hear your affirmation.
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November 5, 2019 at 8:17 PM
In any of these, did you zoom your lens while you moved the camera?
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October 27, 2019 at 10:34 PM
No, I didn’t, but that’s a neat idea, Steve. I may try doing that tomorrow.
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October 28, 2019 at 8:38 PM
Happy experimenting. Even without moving the camera body, zooming in and out during an exposure of several seconds sometimes produces results that remind me of Cubist paintings in that they simultaneously show different aspects of a subject.
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October 28, 2019 at 9:03 PM
Now I have got to try it!
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October 28, 2019 at 9:06 PM
Excellent shots, Linda. This is a technique I find fascinating yet I’ve seldom dabbled in. I’m excited to try it now. Thanks for the inspiration.
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October 27, 2019 at 10:55 PM
Thanks, Ken. Can’t wait to see what you get. Be prepared to throw out 90 percent of your catch, though. I shouldn’t say that. I need to be prepared to throw out 90 percent of my catch.
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October 28, 2019 at 8:40 PM
I throw away 90% now!
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October 28, 2019 at 10:27 PM
OK. Then, 98 percent.
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November 5, 2019 at 8:31 PM
I really like 5. Btw, what is ICM?
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October 27, 2019 at 10:59 PM
Intentional camera movement. You set your ISO very low and your shutter speed very slow and your aperture to a very high number, and move the camera around—or shoot from a moving vehicle. As I told Ken, your ratio of goodies to baddies is very low.
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October 28, 2019 at 8:43 PM
These are great, Linda! I especially like three and four, but six really gets me too. Want to see more.
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October 27, 2019 at 11:34 PM
Thanks, Michael. You will see more on this blog. I love doing these, though it takes a lot of work to identify the possibilities and then see if you can work them up into anything you’d like to look at. I don’t need to tell you, do I.
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October 28, 2019 at 8:45 PM
Thank you. I’ve been paying very close attention to your ICM work. There’s a lot to like. Yes, I do understand. You and I seem to be the only members of this blog community that I’m aware of who are doing ICM work.
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October 28, 2019 at 8:56 PM
That’s interesting, isn’t it. Maybe we should encourage others to play, too. I don’t know about you, but for me the processing is quite labor intensive. Maybe that discourages some photographers.
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October 28, 2019 at 9:05 PM
For me, the processing is 90% of both the time and the fun. It really isn’t for everybody. Some photographers really liked to spend time in the darkroom; others didn’t so much.
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October 28, 2019 at 9:08 PM
Mmmm. I loved the smell of the chemicals. (I don’t think your’e supposed to.) And it was fun to dodge and burn and combine images on the same piece of paper. It’s so much easier to combine images in Photoshop, but I never do. Or rather, I never get anything I like. I really should spend more time on that aspect of photography. I very much admire what some other photographers are able to do with composites.
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October 28, 2019 at 9:19 PM
I was never very fond of the chemicals, but then again I like the taste of aspirin when I was a kid. Are used to do lots of compositing back in the advertising days. Not so much now. Although I may take several parts of layers of the same image and do separate things with them and then blend. Some of my floraportraits and Florascapes have a bit of that. On the ICM’s, I do a lot of spot processing in DxO and then some more after I bring it into Photoshop.
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October 28, 2019 at 9:28 PM
Great photos, Linda, I like espescially the first four images where I can still see landscape characteristics in the unsharpness.
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October 28, 2019 at 3:47 AM
Thank you, Ule. In some of those, I intentionally made the image more blurry in Lightroom. I’m glad you like them.
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October 28, 2019 at 8:48 PM
On the move.. Fine experimental set, Linda! My fav’s are 2,4 and 6.
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October 28, 2019 at 4:52 AM
Experimental set is right, Harrie. You’ve done this, too, I think. Thanks for the votes. We’ll see what I get tomorrow.
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October 28, 2019 at 8:49 PM
This is not what I’ve seen other people do with ICM – these are really interesting. I don’t mean to disparage ICM – I like it, and I like experimenting with it. But if I knew how to approximate what you’ve done in the Wisconsin photos I’d be doing it a lot more, because they really marry the movement and the landscape so beautifully. #4 is like a small utopia in the far distance beckoning – or it’is unreachable, just shining out there by itself. I’d be interested to know if you were in a car when you took that and some of the others, and if you were panning side to side and stopping, or not panning but using slow shutter speeds, or what. 🙂 I wonder if the path in #3 is actually shaped that way or that looping effect is a function of the way you moved the camera. The latter? #5 and #7 look more lie images I feel I’ve seen before, but #8 – that’s another interesting one. I can almost hear it crackle. Wonderful set, Linda!
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October 28, 2019 at 4:44 PM
Number four was probably the happiest surprise for me. I didn’t have to do that much to make it interesting, just cropping and sliding in Lightroom. Yes, the first four were taken from a moving car. Sometimes I also pan or jiggle the camera up and down, but I can’t tell you now what I did on what image. Yes, I used very slow shutter speeds. The path in #3 is just a Photoshop mark I made to which I added Inner Glow and Outer Something. The image was too bland without it. You may well have seen #s 5 and 7, and I thought I’d posted #8, too, but maybe not. Anyway, thanks! Glad you enjoyed these.
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October 28, 2019 at 8:57 PM
From a car, sometimes panning or jiggling – that makes sense. Such fabulous results. I didn’t remember that you use Photoshop. I’m not a user, I never learned it. It surprises me that you added a mark! It works really well; you showed perfect balance and restraint. 🙂
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October 31, 2019 at 1:09 PM
It felt pretty daring—even transgressive— to add that mark. It went through a bazillion iterations. So glad you like this one.
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October 31, 2019 at 9:37 PM
Put me down for #3 and #4 as well. Very cool!
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October 28, 2019 at 7:33 PM
Thank you, John. Number 4 was my favorite of these. I’m particularly glad that you like #3, however. I wondered if I was being too audacious with that orange mark, but I thought I’d put the altered image out there and see what people think.
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October 28, 2019 at 9:01 PM
#3 is my favorite too because it preserves some details of the landscape and almost feels like a painting.
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October 29, 2019 at 12:39 AM
Thanks for your vote of favorite for #3, Alan. It really is almost like a painting if you can count one swipe of the Photoshop pencil and an added Inner Shadow and Inner Glow as paint. I felt absolutely brazen making that mark, but the naked image asked me to do it.
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October 30, 2019 at 8:59 AM
Absolutely wonderful, Linda – the first four are certainly painterly, and I also very much like 6 and 7. A 🙂
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October 29, 2019 at 9:47 AM
Thank you, Adrian. I’m so pleased that you like these. I took some more ICM photographs yesterday. Can’t wait till I find time to look at them.
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October 30, 2019 at 9:01 AM