Abstract Fantasies: Street Photography and ICM, 06 December 2023

Abstract Fantasies: Street Photography and ICM, 06 December 2023

I like intentional camera movement,  there's no denying it. I've been out many times in the woods near our house with various digital cameras playing with the zoom or slow shutter speeds and it's great fun.

But one thing I've always wanted to try is urban ICM. Taking a camera into town and photographing blurred buildings and ghostly people. My inspiration here is the work of the Croatian photographer, Olga Karlovac, who uses low light and slow shutter speeds to produce some lovely urban abstracts. 

Sometimes described as 'blurry' street photography, Olga Karlovac's work is more than that. She catches architecture and people in a way only she can see, using motion blur and high contrast. There are plenty of examples of her work on her Instagram, not just street photography but portraiture too, and as it was a miserable day, not raining but grey and dull, I thought it would be ideal to try this technique.

I have just acquired a new (to me) noughties digicam, the Canon Powershot A720. This 8MP camera from 2008 is a chunky beast, and it was ideal for what I wanted to do. There's this grip on the side where the batteries fit that you can hold the camera firmly in one hand and press the shutter, and as you do so flick your wrist slightly, and it's all quite comfortable.

The camera was switched to black and white mode and the shutter speed set at 1/15s to get some suitable camera movement. The aperture was set at f8 (the smallest aperture on the A720) and the ISO at 80 (the slowest speed). When taking an image I lined up the shot on the LCD then as I was taking the image I flicked my wrist slightly. 

I'm always a little self conscious taking photographs of people, but knowing full well that figures would appear as abstractions was really quite liberating. Finding suitable subjects, like figures in alleys, was not too difficult in the back streets of Aveiro and it was a fascinating experiment. I obtained some nice images, even though it was my first time trying this, and I'm encouraged to go out again. Olga Karlovac certainly has nothing to fear (😉) but it's a nice variation on using intentional camera movement. 

#ICM, #IntentionalCameraMovement, #Exposure, #Creative, #Artistic, #Effect, #Motion, #Blur, #Image, #Abstract, #Urban,