This is my contribution to the A Photo a Week Challenge: Motion prompt.
I quickly had a rather long “shortlist” of around a dozen images but wanted to go with four. That four changed twice before I decided enough was enough and stopped swapping photos.
A 346 second exposure of clouds moving across Colpoy’s Bay at dawn.
Taken using a 7 stop neutral density filter to get the length of exposure needed. I used the Live Time setting on an Olympus camera although I calculated the exposure rather than relying on the Live Time image in the viewfinder.
I went down to Colpoy’s Bay 45 minutes before sunrise yesterday morning.
This is a 3 minute exposure of the clouds moving across Colpoy’s Bay at dawn. Taken using the Live Composite setting on an Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark II. The base exposure was 1 second with a further 179 exposures of 1 second composited in the camera to record the movement of the clouds.
I suppose a Live Composite image is similar to a Collage which is the Cosmic Photo Challenge prompt this week.
This is my contribution to the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Change Your Perspective prompt.
Patti set the challenge by inviting us to “break the habit of shooting photos at eye-level and change your perspective.”
I had a couple of ideas for the challenge. The first was a selection of photos taken at eye level to the subject which can be vastly different to the photographer’s eye-level. The second idea was a selection of photos where the camera is anything but level, pointing up or down.
I had started selecting photos for my second idea before deciding to combine the two.
Look Up. And don’t be afraid to experiment. Motion blurred tree trunks created by vertically panning the camera during exposure. The extra distortion around the edges of the photo are from using a fisheye lens. Taken last winter on one of my walks around the neighborhood.
Look Down. In this case into a tree filled valley after overnight snow. Bickerton Hill, Cheshire, England.
Look Up. And don’t be afraid to experiment again. This photo was made by zooming the lens during exposure. Taken this winter very close to where I took the first Look Up photo the previous winter.
Eye Level. In this case being at eye level with this American Red Squirrel meant lying in the yard with the lens an inch or two above the grass.
Eye Level. In this case I got to eye level with the Redwing by photographing it from a bedroom window.
This is my contribution to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Trees.
I had the post written in my head until I started selecting photos. I found a couple of shots I wanted to use but they didn’t fit into the post I was planning so I abandoned my original plan.
Here’s four shots of trees all taken within a quarter mile of our yard when out for a walk with the camera. Sometimes I was experimenting with deliberate camera movement during exposure and on one occasion I was testing a new lens.
Motion blurred trees. Taken when I was experimenting with deliberate camera movement during exposure.
Tree trunks taken on the first outing with my 85mm lens.
Motion blurred tree trunks. Another shot taken when I was experimenting with deliberate camera movement during exposure.
A confusion of tree trunks. Taken with a telephoto lens to isolate the trunks and compress the perspective.
After experimenting with intentional camera movement earlier in the year I had another experiment on a Sunday morning walk.
This experiment was different in a couple of ways. Firstly, the leaves are now off the trees so there is less colour but the trees are more graphical shapes with the bare branches.
Secondly, for my earlier experiments I had been using short telephoto lenses. For this shot I went in the opposite direction and used my fisheye lens. A fisheye lens has an ultra wide angle of view with strong visual distortion towards the edges of the photos.
I find it interesting that the tops of the trees are curved inwards due to the distortion of the fisheye lens but that the branches streak outwards due to the camera movement. It was an exposure of 1/3 of a second while panning the camera vertically.
