Sharp or Blurry

In general, photographers like it when their work is sharp and crisp, showing all the leaves on the trees and highlighting the details of the feathers on a bird. The search for sharpness applies to street photography, architecture, still life, and many others. But, there may be room for blurry results to convey different ideas.

I have written other articles on camera movement, multiple exposures in one frame, in camera, or post-production. The results may be more emotional than informational. Ballet and dance may become more about the motion than the perfection of the position. Or, specs of light may create random lines or color swatches with intriguing color patterns.

Less Sharp Can be Planned

In this article, I will mainly present intentional camera movement and multiple exposures in one frame. Please remember that these are my sensibilities and may not work for your photography. Remember, what I will present are tools, not rules. If they don’t work for you, ignore them.

Generally, we are bugged by camera movement, which results in unsharp images. I have shaky hands and have tossed out many frames because my hands moved during the exposure. That is unintentional camera movement; there is no reason to seek that. Occasionally, it may yield an interesting frame or two, but it will miss intent. I know of one photographer, Bill Clark, who has produced a large body of work using ICM. He has an additional advantage in moving his camera: He is also a calligrapher!

Intentional Camera Movement (ICM)

You may have seen landscape photographs showing trees stretched up and down, or the sky and the water creating layers of color possibly separated by a sliver of land. To a great extent, this approach is a random process, and it may or may not work every time. The movement might have been too fast or too slow, there may be accidental camera rotations, and so on that will result in a good number of frames being tossed away.

Camera Settings For Blurry Results

To facilitate the camera movement, we need time. I change the ISO to 100, as low as I can go on my Canon R7, and increase the f-stop until I reach a shutter speed of around 1-3 seconds. That will give me enough time to drag the camera on a straight or curved path during the exposure. I find late afternoon light more suitable for this kind of work, but you can always add a neutral-density filter or two to reduce the light to arrive at the desired exposure settings.

During that time, each element in the frame will change its position and expose different parts of the sensor. The resulting image generally lacks contrast and may be slightly overexposed. Although exposure compensation is an option, I typically deal with this in post-processing.

Movement Patterns

For me, the ideal conditions are those where a bright streak of light rests on darker backgrounds, like lawns or piles of fallen leaves. I may choose to follow the line to emphasize it or use random movements to spread the light. The presence of some light and dark areas works better for me, but I have gotten good results from reasonably even color and contrast distribution. The key here is to keep taking the frames. I like it when the elements in motion are also recorded with some recognizability.

In Post-Production

After importing the images to Lightroom, I look for frames with promising contrast in tones and even colors. It may be hard to see this at first, but a little movement of the Blacks, Whites, Contrast, Clarity, Dehaze, and Curves will likely give you an idea of the potential in the frame. And don’t forget cropping is also an option if one part of the frame looks more promising.

You will evaluate the streak of colors of the leaves on the ground or branches or whatever scenery elements you may have chosen. Blurry becomes better, with a hint of the subject(s). Here are two versions of the same frame, as it was imported and after adjustments in Lightroom. The original was underexposed by -0.33.

Click on the images to see them larger, uncropped, and read their titles.

While adjusting the image, remember that there is no right or wrong color or contrast. You are creating an abstract image using your original blurry photograph. Here are more. Some were taken minutes apart from the one above, all were taken in my neighborhood.

In Camera Multiple Exposure

Although intentional camera movement captures multiple exposures in one frame, there is a feature in most, maybe all digital cameras that allows us to take a set number of shots and blend them in the camera. The parameters and features vary among brands, even models. I will use the settings in my Canon R7 and ask you to explore yours.

Set The Camera For Multiple Exposure

The menu screen images are taken from the Canon online manual.

Using the Menu button, find the multiple exposure settings. On the R7, it is under the first tab menu block, Still Image Shooting, and has a red camera icon. Under that block, move to the sixth tab to see the necessary settings. Then, select multiple exposures. When the next screen appears, select Enable and you will see the multiple exposure control menu. The next three screens will let you choose how you want multiple exposures to be handled, the number of exposures, and whether to do this for one shot or continuously.

The Additive option will add the exposure at every pixel and show the cumulative result. The exposure adjustment is necessary on R7 if you choose this option. The rule of thumb is to lower the exposure by the number of exposures divided by two. For two exposures, it will be -1, for three, -1.5; and so on. Otherwise, the resulting JPEG will be overexposed.

The Average option offers automatic exposure control while it averages the exposure value at each pixel. The other options, Bright and Dark, are self-explanatory. At each pixel, the merging will use the brighter or the darker values.

I have only tried the Additive and Average options. Experiment! The next option is the number of exposures and experimentation is the key again. For the last option, since I was doing this to experiment with the idea, I set it to the Continuously option.

Find Suitable Subjects

Very different subjects can be combined and there is no rule other than to experiment. I even added camera movement for blurry results on one or two trials. When the shooting starts, you will take the required number of exposures and then see “Busy” on the screen as the camera combines the frames into a JPEG image.

Take a look at the combined image, decide if you want to change anything, and keep shooting and experimenting. Here are some of my experimental images. I took them near a colorful fall foliage on a low bush. The colors are similar but you will detect different framing approaches, camera movements, and even far-out post-processing in the last image.

Addendum

This morning, a little after this article was published, I stumbled on an article on a site I visit often, PetaPixel. It is about Sandra Bartocha and her emotional photography. Her work highlights the inherent invitation in this kind of photography which I have called for many years “time compressions” or “time layers.” They invite the viewers to engage in a conversation where the viewer becomes the main storyteller.