ICM Photography - Intentional Camera Movement Discussion

A friend of mine (she's the newest entry) was featured on this website, a website I'd never seen before. While looking through I came across this entry...
https://readframes.com/southern-sawgrass-by-sherri-bunye/
The most interesting paragraph to me was, 'The most successful ICM photography are images that still adhere to all the formal rules of a good photograph, such as there is a clear subject, well composed, good use of color or monochrome tones, etc.'
 
Ted I'm confused, how do you create a ICM shot without using an app. Would you need to do a long shutter and then move the camera?
 
as much as I admire these it seems to just get a bit repetitive after a while, I can't imagine doing nothing but ICM like some of these people do.
Same here. Even with the ones I really like, like David Howell, if I view too many at once, they all start to look the same. It happens with any style of photography for me. I think that's partly an Instagram effect -- the much-promoted idea that you're building an audience and need to have a consistent look for your "brand." Often times I find that these people have a web site or a second and third IG account where you can see much more diverse work.

It's one more reason why I'm happy to be resolutely and enthusiastically unprofessional :thumbs:. I'll bet my IG feed is as random as yours, if not more so.:lmao:
 
Ted I'm confused, how do you create a ICM shot without using an app. Would you need to do a long shutter and then move the camera?
That's the basic way, yes. Start moving the camera and then trip the shutter. And as I'm poking into more explanations from people of how they do ICM, I'm seeing that many of them are using shorter shutter speeds than I imagined, around 1/4 second, even 1/8 second (where I had been thinking in terms to 1 or 2 seconds or more). And there are many manual control camera apps that can do that, so Slow Shutter Cam (or whatever long exposure camera app) isn't necessary.

Some people are doing single-shot ICM straight out of the camera rather than layering ICM shots like Howell and Gray. And some are doing abstracts, some Turner-esque or impressionist, some street blur, all different styles. It's a technique, like HDR, rather than a style in itself, I think.

Is that what you were asking?
 
A friend of mine (she's the newest entry) was featured on this website, a website I'd never seen before. While looking through I came across this entry...
https://readframes.com/southern-sawgrass-by-sherri-bunye/
The most interesting paragraph to me was, 'The most successful ICM photography are images that still adhere to all the formal rules of a good photograph, such as there is a clear subject, well composed, good use of color or monochrome tones, etc.'
Your friend is Trish Korous? That's a beautiful photo of hers they featured.
 
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That's the basic way, yes. Start moving the camera and then trip the shutter. And as I'm poking into more explanations from people of how they do ICM, I'm seeing that many of them are using shorter shutter speeds than I imagined, around 1/4 second, even 1/8 second (where I had been thinking in terms to 1 or 2 seconds or more). And there are many manual control camera apps that can do that, so Slow Shutter Cam (or whatever long exposure camera app) isn't necessary.

Some people are doing single-shot ICM straight out of the camera rather than layering ICM shots like Howell and Gray. And some are doing abstracts, some Turner-esque or impressionist, some street blur, all different styles. It's a technique, like HDR, rather than a style in itself, I think.

Is that what you were asking?
Yes, I'm having trouble finding a camera app that can do long exposures on Android.
 
'The most successful ICM photography are images that still adhere to all the formal rules of a good photograph, such as there is a clear subject, well composed, good use of color or monochrome tones, etc.'
As long as "good" means "effective" rather than "traditional" or "approved." Some wonderful images may be quite eccentric in composition, color, etc.
 
ProShot has both iOS and Android version (it was Android first!), and the iOS version has shutter speeds as long as 1 second, which will work for ICM. Don't know about apps with longer than that.
Footej Camera is free and can go up to 4 secs, I'll have a play with that. Proshot is expensive ;)
 
Same here. Even with the ones I really like, like David Howell, if I view too many at once, they all start to look the same. It happens with any style of photography for me. I think that's partly an Instagram effect -- the much-promoted idea that you're building an audience and need to have a consistent look for your "brand." Often times I find that these people have a web site or a second and third IG account where you can see much more diverse work.
Thinking a bit more about this...

It's also visual fatigue, I think. How many photos in the same genre can you view in a row before you start to lose your ability to discern differences? (Similar to how many perfumes you can sniff before you can't tell the differences.) Before the internet age, we never saw so many images all at once (and TV was all low-res and moving images). The most we could see in a "stream" would be a coffee table photo book, and even that, I doubt most people would look through all at once. Now we get more new images than that each time we log into Instragram, even if we log in several times a day. Our brains are struggling to catch up.

(Yeah, yeah, people born and raised in the internet era are likely to be more comfortable with scanning large streams of images, but "comfort" and "scanning" are not what I'm talking about. They make you neither better nor worse at grokking individual images.)
 
Thinking a bit more about this...

It's also visual fatigue, I think. How many photos in the same genre can you view in a row before you start to lose your ability to discern differences? (Similar to how many perfumes you can sniff before you can't tell the differences.) Before the internet age, we never saw so many images all at once (and TV was all low-res and moving images). The most we could see in a "stream" would be a coffee table photo book, and even that, I doubt most people would look through all at once. Now we get more new images than that each time we log into Instragram, even if we log in several times a day. Our brains are struggling to catch up.

(Yeah, yeah, people born and raised in the internet era are likely to be more comfortable with scanning large streams of images, but "comfort" and "scanning" are not what I'm talking about. They make you neither better nor worse at grokking individual images.)
The infinite scroll doesn't help, you can loose hours there.
 
Same here. Even with the ones I really like, like David Howell, if I view too many at once, they all start to look the same. It happens with any style of photography for me. I think that's partly an Instagram effect -- the much-promoted idea that you're building an audience and need to have a consistent look for your "brand." Often times I find that these people have a web site or a second and third IG account where you can see much more diverse work.

It's one more reason why I'm happy to be resolutely and enthusiastically unprofessional :thumbs:. I'll bet my IG feed is as random as yours, if not more so.:lmao:
Same. You start off getting all excited and then think, oh my goodness, there’s hundreds of people doing it and to get something truly unique is hard. And actually, I think ...yawn... I’m getting a bit bored.
 
A friend of mine (she's the newest entry) was featured on this website, a website I'd never seen before. While looking through I came across this entry...
https://readframes.com/southern-sawgrass-by-sherri-bunye/
The most interesting paragraph to me was, 'The most successful ICM photography are images that still adhere to all the formal rules of a good photograph, such as there is a clear subject, well composed, good use of color or monochrome tones, etc.'
I pretty much agree with this statement personally. I like
https://instagram.com/erik_malm_photography?igshid=h3tkwvhgaf4c .

He keeps a bit of detail and for me it‘s more thought provoking.
 
View attachment 158443

Younger Lagoon
Shot with Slow Shutter Cam in Bulb mode using a horizontal pan. Then I saved out three images with different freeze points, layered two of them in Leonardo, slid the layers around to align the fence posts, and played with the colors. Last, I gave it a slight touch of Style/Lighten/3 in iColorama. (Still not sure if it's better with or without that last step.)
I like this, Ted. I think SSC with the ability to blend freeze frames is a winner. The only problem is having to do it on the spot. Sometimes I forget or a new image is emerging.
 
Here’s another of my Slow Shutter Cam images that I took on Sunday. Again bringing back some details from a freeze frame using Procreate and then reducing structure a little in Snapseed.

86B74BD5-D305-4124-8023-723BB6389D1C.png
 
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One of the apps I tried on Sunday was Spectre. I’ve only downloaded it on Sunday for this purpose. The fact that the minimum exposure time is 3 seconds is a bit limiting to me. As terse has said many ICMs are taken at less than 1/2 second.

However, it saves a Live version and by opening it up in Live2Photo you can select any of 60 frames with the 3 second option. I found using a slower movement better than quick. If you want to get a sharp still somewhere it’s worth stopping at the beginning or end. Using ImgPlay you can convert it to a movie so you could create an interesting experimental video from your shots. It doesn’t work with Apple’s live options although it sounds as if it should.

Here’s a slow-mo gif for convenience sake. I also applied an effect in ImgPlay.

1AA6A5BA-B7E2-40DA-903E-541A08238F9E.gif
 
One of the apps I tried on Sunday was Spectre. I’ve only downloaded it on Sunday for this purpose. The fact that the minimum exposure time is 3 seconds is a bit limiting to me. As terse has said many ICMs are taken at less than 1/2 second.

However, it saves a Live version and by opening it up in Live2Photo you can select any of 60 frames with the 3 second option. I found using a slower movement better than quick. If you want to get a sharp still somewhere it’s worth stopping at the beginning or end. Using ImgPlay you can convert it to a movie so you could create an interesting experimental video from your shots. It doesn’t work with Apple’s live options although it sounds as if it should.

Here’s a slow-mo gif for convenience sake. I also applied an effect in ImgPlay.

View attachment 158493
You’re getting some wonderful ICMs Ann. I really like Spectre because you don’t have to wait the full three seconds. If you watch the image form you can stop the process by pressing the shutter button again. I can’t get on with Bluristic for some reason, although I know sinnerjohn John gets some great images with it.
 
You’re getting some wonderful ICMs Ann. I really like Spectre because you don’t have to wait the full three seconds. If you watch the image form you can stop the process by pressing the shutter button again. I can’t get on with Bluristic for some reason, although I know sinnerjohn John gets some great images with it.
Thanks and thanks for the tip. That’s really good to know. I didn’t know you could stop it.
 
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