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Experimental and Constructed Images
Don’t become too fixed in your ideas about what makes a technically good photograph. Successful pictures don’t necessarily have to be blur-free, full of detail and an accurate record of what was in front of your camera. In fact, sometimes what at first seemed like an error can produce the sort of image that sums up an event or expresses a subject better than a completely controlled photograph that produces a predictable result. Happy accidents or the unexpected result mean that you can then explore this approach further, allowing you another chance to expand your picture-making skills. It’s also great fun. Few of the techniques in this part call for equipment beyond a camera offering a ‘B’ setting shutter (long exposure), or a couple of small attachments such as lens filters. On the other hand, they are all suggestions for experiments, so you must be prepared to waste film on a trial-anderror basis. Or if you are a digital shooter, expect to shoot many images in order to obtain a couple that are usable. Don’t let this idea worry you, as even professionals expect to shoot many frames for one good result. This is often called the ‘shooting ratio’. Areas like wildlife photography and sports journalism typically have high numbers of wasted photographs for every one or two acceptable pictures. For your experiments take a range of versions of your subject, making notes of the settings used. This way you can match the results with the techniques used to produce them. You can then, if necessary, make further experimental shots based on your best results. Remember too that even after the shooting and processing stages there is still plenty you can do to alter and reconstruct pictures. This can be done by joining prints, combining slides, and hand-coloring black and white prints. A wider range of manipulative possibilities opens up if you are working with digital photographs and some of the special effects features of one of the many image editing software packages on the market.
38 Letting the image move
T
he painter Paul Klee once said that ‘a line is a dot that has gone for a walk’. In photography, as soon as you allow the image to move, while it is exposing every dot, the highlights of the picture are drawn onto the photograph as a line. This image movement
might be the result of shifting your camera during a long exposure, in which case the subject remains static and fixed and the camera moves (see Figure 38.1). Alternatively, the camera might remain still and the subject move. Or thirdly, interesting pictures can result when both the camera and subject are on the move, as in Figure 38.7. We are all used to experiencing blur as a symbol of movement, from close objects rushing past the car window, to the streaks drawn behind characters in comic strips. A photograph can exaggerate speed by showing the subject with lengthy blur trails, created by allowing considerable image movement during a long exposure time. Your subject can appear to have bumpy or smooth motion too, according to the shape of the lines – something you can control by jerking or gliding
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