Down to the river...

Armed with a full selection of ND filters and tripod and in the middle of the afternoon I headed off to the river to see what I could do with the water there. I've not taken any pictures of water trails for quite a while and it is one of the most accesible subjects for blur-o-graphy. The first four pictures were taken with the camera mounted on the tripod and with all three of my neutral density filters mounted in front of the lens the ND2, 4 and 8

Above: ISO 100 f22 13 secs

Above: ISO 100 f22 25 secs

The next two were taken from the same viewpoint (OK so the camera moved a tiny bit) with the same settings. It just goes to show that the flow of the water can make subtle differences in the image
Both ISO100 f 22 4 secs
Below: ISO100 f22 5 secs

Out and about with ND filters

On Monday my selection of Cokin ND filters arrived. I was excited to try them out but had to wait until today, Friday to do so. So I went down to Riverside park in Princeton to try them out on some of the trees down there. It was a cloudy day and with the ND4 and ND8 I could really slow the shutter speed down with the aperture wide open. It was quite fun to mess around. I've also started to tweak the images more in CameraRaw.

Above ISO 100 f 5.6 0.5 sec 42mm ZD 14-42 ND4 + ND8

ISO 100 f4.5 0.6 sec 42mm ZD 14-42 ND8

Above: ISO 100 f 4.5 1 second 26mm ZD 14-42 ND4 + ND8

Above: ISO 100 f5.6 0.3 sec 42mm ZD 14-42 ND4

Coneflower studies

The beautiful conditions at the cabin this weekend must have inspired me for when I saw the Coneflowers in the garden I fair attacked them with the camera. Some of the results are seen below

Above: Blowing in the wind. ISO 100 f22 0.6 sec 200mm PL 45-200 ND2 filter

Above: "Coneflower spin". ISO 100 f16 0.5 sec 24mm ZD 14-42

Above: "Shining". ISO 100 f16 0.5 sec 24mm ZD 14-42

Above: "!" ISO 100 F16 0.8 sec 42mm ZD 14-42

Above: "Centre" ISO 100 f 16 1 sec 42mm ZD 14-42

On Order

Yesterday I placed an order for come Cokin neutral density filters. They will help me open the aperture up and slow the shutter speed down when I carry on taking pictures

Further Lilly Studies

The Lillies in my wifes garden are providing me with excellent subject matter this week.

Lilly #1

I needed a break from trees for my blur-o-graph subjects. So I tried a budding lilly in the wifes flower bed. At last count it was 40 attempts at this one bud to get something I was grudingly happy with. I had to get some distracting background out of the shot that's why you can't see the tip of the bloom. I would have liked the tip in there. But then you would have seen a dark streak on the image.

Blurs around my house (part2)

This particular morning I ran out to take advantage of the early morning sun and learnt something.

See the Orangey streaks? That is lens flare. See how it's curved. That because I was shooting wit the lens zoomed out wide 17mm on my ZD 14-42. A couple of interesting facts to bear in mind for the future.

Blurs around my house (part1)

in the week most of my time is taken up with driving to work, working, driving home and getting a run in as part of my marathon training as a result sometimes I'm left with very little time to shoot. Still I persevere. and shooting into the sunset I got two very different effects. Firstly here is the normal scene of my front yard. I purposely shot directly into the sun so there would be some contrast between light and shadow.

Above: This image I shot moving the camera downwards which seems to be an unnatural movement for me. I seem to want to always move the camera upwards like below. You can see that something as simple as the direction of the movement has an effect on the image.

Tree trunk Blur

I tried a bit of a different technique this time. I focussed on the hollow in the tree trunk and held the camera there for about half of the .8 sec exposure before moving it. It gave some definition to that element of the image which I kinda like.

Trees and water fountain

Blur-o-graphy I just like the good old days of film photography. You don't know what you're going to get until you process the image. Like this one. Not my best shot of this particular day I feel. But what attracts me to this image is that light streak in the upper right third. It was left by a water fountain in the background of the scene. I love that.

Cherry Tree Blur

You'll have to excuse me I'm still playing catch up. This image is just over a week old.

Blurs can be hit or miss. When I looked out of the window Friday evening and saw this shaft of light cutting through the trunk of the flowering cherry in our back garden I just knew that I had to have a picture. I dropped the washing up (I didn't break anything) and ran outside. Unfortunately I only had time for the one shot before the sun had moved and the light was gone. So I never got the chance to explore the light fully . Still there's an ethereal ghostly quality to the image

A change of Scenery

I've spent the whole week looking for blur-o-graph subjects in my back garden, (more of those to come later). So on Friday evening I decided to head over to the Sherburne Wildlife refuge to see how I would look at the new vistas presented to me. In retrospect I was probably out there too early as it had been a very bright and sunny day and with only an ND2 filter to slow things down some of my shutter speeds were a tad too fast initially, even with the ND2 filter and some judicious use of shadows it took a while for the shutter speeds to come down to where ai was happy with them. Still I did get some shots I was reasonably happy with. But I feel that there was a couple that I missed because of the light levels. So its off to the camera shop this afternoon to get another ND filter.

So here's some of the pictures that I liked from yesterday evening. I was shocked to find that I had actually taken 71 pictures in the short time I was out. I think these are some of the most "painterly" blurs I've shot so far. I'm also starting to tweak a bit more in CameraRAW too.

Young Birches ISO 100 f/22 .3 sec 45mm PL 45-200 ND2
Twisted Birch Saplings ISO 100 f 1/10 sec 200mm PL45-200 ND2
Fir Plantation ISO100 f11 .5 sec 200mm PL 45-200 ND2
Vee'd Oaks ISO 100 f16 0.4 sec 45mm PL 45-200 ND2

White Streak

Another thing I very quickly cottoned onto is that WHITE tree trunks are popular in blur pictures. Birches and Aspens in particular. Sadly I only have the one white trunked paper birch in my front yard the rest of the fir trees surrounding our house are all dark trunked. So when we headed up to the North Shore of Lake Superior to watch the lighting of Split Rock Lighthouse as soon as I saw the white trunks of the trees nearby I knew I had to have a go.

Not a perfect shot by any means but I does illustrate why white tree trunks are so popular in blurs, they contrast so well with the background.

Diagonal Blur

By now you should be able to tell that I am well and truly hooked on this "blur-o-graphy" lark. So the day after the sunset blur picture I was out again close to sunset to see what I could find. I was taken with the diagonal stress to this scene. Already I was starting to see things in terms of light and shade rather than shape and form. This picture I feel is the one so far that feels most like an impressionist painting.

Sunset Blur

This will always be a special picture for me. This one was taken to mark 90 days of my Picture a Day project. I knew I wanted to mark 90 days with a blur so I waited until the end of the day to get a sunset shot to see what I could do.

Cottoning on...

It didn't take me very long to realise that trees and tree trunks are a very suitable subject for blur-o-graphy. Being vertical its very easy to pan up the height of a tree and get patterns in the bark to streak into interesting formations.

This was my first effort. Not that I made it easy on myself mind. I went for three trunks close together.

But that did serve to teach me something. Focus can make a difference.

You might well think (and who can blame you) that if you're moving the camera what difference does it make if your shot is in focus?

It has to do with depth of field. On a close up view like this you can see that the middle tree is sharper than the outer two. This was shot wide open at f4.5 at 78mm with my Panasonic Lumix 45-200 so not much depth of field there. You can tell that the middle tree was in focus.

This early picture is still one of my favourites.

Progress

Suitably intrigued by my first attempt at this new technique of blur-o-graphy, a few days later I was out in the front yard in the rain trying out the technique again. Another very pleasing result for a beginner.

I think I shot about a dozen pictures of this scene. This being number 12. "

Quit while you're winning" say I

How did I get here?

I discovered "Landscape blurs" or blur-o-graphy as I like to call it quite by accident. I was out early one morning to take a picture for my picture a day project, attracted by the dew laden grass in my front yard.

I scouted around, looking for a good angle and once I found a view I liked I pressed the shutter release, not remembering that I had the 2 second delay still on from the previous night. So the picture didn't take when I expected it to and when the shutter did release the camera was moving.

"Curses!" I thought to myself and switched on the LCD to delete the image. But hang on a moment, there was something rather pleasing about this picture. It wasn't about the details in the shot it was about the light and shadow and how it affected the colours. It reminded me of the impressionist paintings I used to love to look at in Art College.

I thought I was onto something, something new and exciting. I posted the picture in my blog at the micro four thirds site, mu-43.com and was introduced to the works of Alain Briot. Very neat. Further research has revealed other practitioners of the technique such as William Neil and others whose web presences I will place in the links section.

So I'm not the only one practicing the technique. In fact I'm very much the beginner. But I'm very excited by the whole concept and have been photographing blurs quite a lot since this first shot. Excited enough to want to blog about the pictures I take and discuss what I learn from taking them.