Shot from the hip

Clive Haynes & Martin Addison gave their Foto-Synthesis talk at Maidenhead on 17th March 2009. They presented sets of images - usually six to nine prints at once. One of the most striking sets recorded a journey through the London Underground, where the camera had been set to a very slow shutter speed and pointed roughly in the direction of something interesting or colourful. This extreme form of camera-shake produced some very interesting images, so I set off to try the technique for myself.

I went for a walk around Taplow one afternoon in March: the sun was shining so there was a lot of light around. I wanted exposures of about a quarter of a second, so it was quite difficult avoiding over-exposure. After some experiments I set the camera to 100 ISO, f/22, 0.25s, and added a polarising filter to cut the light still further. I turned off image stabilisation and did not use the viewfinder at all.

As I walked along, I pointed the camera at anything that caught my attention and pressed the shutter release without stopping. I found that I was sub-conciously panning the camera as I walked past things, and this proved to be a good technique as the main subject of each picture was then less blurred than the surroundings. In some cases I got an almost 3D effect.

I took almost 200 photos, including a small number where I stopped and set the camera to a more conventional shutter speed for a sharp image. A remarkable number of the long exposures were interesting enough to print or to enter in club competitions. One of them (of a runner on the Thames Path) scored 19/20, which is even more remarkable given the known conservatism of club-circuit judges!

While reviewing the set for the first time I found that the movement in the images was linking them into a story, so I removed the real duds and the duplicates and turned the rest into a slideshow-cum-movie called Walking

Here is a selection of images. Most are exactly as-taken, though one or two have been cropped and adjusted for density. What do you think?