Photo Impressionism - Zoom & Flick

I demonstrated the swipe/blur technique at a workshop this past weekend. This technique is all about coordinating the shutter release and the movement of your camera. Sunflowers make a great subject for this technique. The first time I visited this Sunflower field I made about 250 photographs. Out of those, over 200 were abstract and photo impressionistic.

It's very easy to create photos that are abstract. It's much harder to create a photo impressionistic image, especially in the camera. Being able to understand what the subject is and yet see it rendered in a different fashion is always more intriguing.

Brookside Gardens Workshop Report

I just completed a workshop through VisArts. We spent some time photographing at Brookside Gardens. The Tulips were quite amazing! If you haven’t had a chance to visit Brookside while the Tulips are in bloom, you should.

The group was very enthusiastic and photographed non-stop for 3 hours. I demonstrated various techniques from optimal exposures to creating abstract images. The participants were fairly new to creating blurs and multiple exposures and seem to enjoy the process. Seeing their images in the critique session I was quite impressed how quickly they were able to pick up the technique and create some lovely images.

The blog image was made as the light started to get harsh. A diffuser was used to soften the light. Here are a few abstract/photo impressionistic images I made during the demonstrations and after the participants left. Click on the thumbnails to view the larger image.