I’m lucky to have a friend who’s a wonderful photographer, mentor and inspirer of all things. Lauri threw down a challenge this morning to shoot a roll of (virtual or real) film every day for a couple weeks. Today has been crazy blustery all day so I set out to do something I love to shoot, but haven’t for quite a while – ICM.
What’s ICM?
ICM stands for Intentional Camera Movement where you deliberately move the camera up, down, side to side or in circles while the shutter is open. Shooting in the day requires you to stop the shutter way down in order to get a longer exposure – or you can use an ND filter. Alternately you can shoot on dark cloudy days, or early morning, late afternoon or in areas of deep shadow. Or some combination of the above. Don’t forget about indoors! Blur it enough and even a cluttered desk or a pile of laundry becomes interesting! All of you people that say you have nothing interesting to shoot – try ICM.
ICM is fun because it’s very easy to do – you really don’t even have to focus on something if you are going for a pure abstract. It’s also challenging to get it just right. The speed at which you move the camera will affect the “smoothness” of the final image. Finding a subject with just the right amount of contrast in light can be tricky too. But it’s a fun way to play – you can wind up with something recognizable to something completely abstract.
I sort of cheated – we were supposed to shoot either 12, 24 or 36 images each day for the challenge, I shot 39 – and wound up with 10 that I found interesting enough to play with. A few of these 10 are SOOC, some I played with in various ways, but they are all single exposure, no layers. I’m not sure if I love any of them, I am out of practice with ICM, but I already have a few ideas for tomorrow 🙂 .
Are you interested in fun challenges like this?
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I’ve posted a couple other of my ICM favorites from Mono Lake, one of these days I’ll reorganize and upload more!
