handshake landscape handscape landshake: a shutter speed series (day 3: landscape and lens ‘residency’)

day 3: i went up to the woods today and with a plan this time. returning to the action of the camera again but this time to explore or maybe reinforce the lens as an embodied practice by changing one of its technical aspects which directly links to the action of the body – the shutter speed. there were a few ways i wanted to explore landscape, lens and body through the shutter speed – letting the camera record the moving landscape from a still position or let the camera move as the body moves and record a relatively still landscape. i opted for the second on this relatively calm day and within this i experimented with slight hand shake and then moving to more gross motor movements such as jumps and swinging movements. i brought the shutter speed down to a very slow 1/10 seconds. here are a sample of the many images of today – i will upload more when i have faster broadband.

running jump series

reflection: these images reinforce the lens as an embodied practice – although i suppose the camera could have been shaken by non-body means. i am struck by the painterly way the camera caught the action of body as it moved the camera at the moment of capture. some of my images even look like charcoal drawings – perhaps that ‘haptic’ quality of a hand drawn line is from the handshake. i wonder how this type of image would translate as screen prints? worth a try. i think the less forced movements work best – i am reminded of the handshake ‘mistakes’ in analogue days and with delete and editing now easily available in digital i rarely see these handshake images or red-eye for that matter and these rarely make it to print so that’s why print might be an interesting next step – a very involved process involved in making an image.  the sky was really bright today and, although sunny, there was an even white haze which probably adds to their drawing quality and i like these as uncluttered images but i would also like to try slow shutter image making in other weather conditions. and finally – i must have taken over 50 images – gone are the days of 24 or 36 shot rolls – might that be a parameter to work within?