I realise I have been experimenting quite a lot lately, with a band-photoshoot and film photography for example. A visit to my local park led to another experiment, yet a totally different one. I made these photos about three weeks ago, on a not so sunny morning. There were a couple of nice spots, for example I like the tree with the garlands (far below), and I spotted a tree-trunk with some cool colors. But I was looking for something a bit more special, and the light was letting me down. I had recently read about ICM (Intentional Camera Movement), and the lack of sunlight meant that I could do some long exposures without filter, so when I spotted a tree with a nice pattern on the trunk I decided to give it a try. I set the exposure at 1-1.5 second, and moved the camera up and down during exposure. I kind of like the result:

Leica Tele-Elmarit 1:2.8/90mm; 1.5 sec @ f/8.0

Leica Tele-Elmarit 1:2.8/90mm; 1.0 sec @ f/8.0

I like it, but I am not sure what to do with it. I decided to use it as a layer in Photoshop, and see where it would lead. I had a photo of a tree from another day (photo below), with a nice-shaped branch. I added the right-hand-side ICM image as a transparent layer, but cleared some of the layer to bring out the tree. The result is the photo on top of this post.

I did a similar exercise with the left-hand-side ICM image and an image from the same morning. You can see the original photo (top) and the photoshopped one (bottom) below. I think this time the effect is more subtle, but it creates a bit of dreamy atmosphere. I am not sure where to go with this, but it was nice to do some experiments!

By the way, here is a photo of the tree with ‘normal’ exposure (but I had to increase the iso to get a decent shot, that’s how dark it was).

Other photos from that morning (with only standard post-processing 😉 ):

First the garlands:

And some tree-trunks:

Thanks for reading!