Rick Doble: Time-Flow Photography: Experimental Imagery with Continuous Motion & Long Shutter Speeds by Rick Doble

TABLE OF CONTENTS (TOC) ●

Introduction

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Effects of Long Shutter Speed Exposures

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How To Experiment

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Putting These Effects Into Practice All paintings and Futurist art are from commons.wikimedia.org. All color photography is by Rick Doble.

Introduction: What Is Time-Flow Photography? I coined the term 'time-flow photography' to describe photographs of motion that were taken with long shutter speeds. This type of imagery records continuous movement rather than segmented motion such as that captured with a flashing strobe light and a long shutter speed. My goal was to record the full sweep of motion over a number of seconds. As you will read, this idea was first put forward 100 years ago when photography was quite limited. But today a full range of new imagery may be possible with the advanced capabilities of digital.

Early Experimentation This interactive eBook contains a variety of early experimental images -- an exploration of what was now possible with the new digital photography medium. This eBook shows both the effects I was able to achieve and also my development as the technology itself developed. In the beginning -- because I was often limited by a shutter speed that was too high, a fixed low ISO, low resolution and small storage space -- time-flow photography was difficult to record, yet with a little ingenuity it could be accomplished.

After 30 years in film photography, I bought one of the first digital cameras in 1998 -- an extremely limited lo-res Casio, but state of the art for the time. The optimal picture size was 480X320 with fixed focus, limited settings and tiny storage. Yet, as the first camera with a LCD monitor, I could see a photo instantly after I had shot it. This meant that, for the first time, I could experiment and know what I was recording.

Exploring a wide range of moving imagery -- such as Ferris Wheels, rodeos, traffic, driving, rave concerts, self portraits and musicians as they played -- these early experiments are offered to inspire and point the way to more experimentation with the now much more sophisticated equipment. My experiments with long shutter speeds and motion blurs or paints the photograph with light. This work records the world both in space and in time. Warning: Some people do not like this kind of photography. They think that all photographs should be sharp and that these effects are accidental. While all art is a matter of taste, the effects you see here are deliberate, controlled and sophisticated. If you like Impressionist and Modern art, you might consider these photographs to be a kind of impressionist photography. If you like abstract art, you may like the abstracted quality of these photographs. If you don't like either of these kinds of painting, you probably won't like these photographs.

I coined the phrase

time-flow

to describe the particular imagery in this eBook, because this work does not segment movement into multiple sharp images as with a flashing strobe light, but rather records unbroken motion. For example, this bouncing basketball photographed with such a strobe, shows the ball as multiple images rather than one long brush stroke.

Time-Flow Photography As you will see, continuous movement -- when looked at closely -is quite complex. Things go in different directions, at different speeds and in different ways.

One hundred years ago, a modern photographer, Anton Bragaglia embarked on the same quest. He called the imagery he wanted to record, Photodynamism and specifically rejected strobe-like imagery that divided motion into pieces. Here is what he wrote:

We despise the precise, mechanical, glacial reproduction of reality, and take the utmost care to avoid it. For us this is a harmful and negative element, whereas for cinematography...it is the very essence. And so [ED: with Photodynamism] â&#x20AC;&#x201C; just as the study of anatomy has always been essential for an artist â&#x20AC;&#x201C; now a knowledge of the paths traced by bodies in action and of their transformation in motion will be indispensable for the painter of movement. BRAGAGLIA'S FUTURIST PHOTODYNAMISM MANIFESTO

ABOUT MY WORK AND METHODS Like any artist, I have my own particular way of approaching my work and my subjects. Virtually all of my photos were taken handheld even with exposures as long as 10 seconds. I took these shots in candid situations and under available light, usually at night. I tried to frame each picture as tightly as possible so I didn't crop most of them. I also tried to get the exposure right at the time, but was not afraid to use standard darkroom tweaks such as adjusting the contrast, lightness-darkness, etc. Most effects you see here were photographic and I rarely used computer graphics. I wanted to see what could be accomplished photographically rather than with software or trying to fix a bad shot with software.

Just as a painter paints with a brush, a slow exposure allows a photographer to paint with light. Each point of light is like a brush that is spread across the image for as long as the shutter is open. These brushes can move in different directions depending on the movement and therefore can create myriad effects. These effects are similar to the work of the Impressionist painters who were preoccupied with the effect of light. The example below compares a Seurat painting on the left and a time-flow photograph on the right.

The following screens compare Impressionist and similar work on the left with my time-flow photographs on the right.

Seurat

Contemporary Portrait

Toulouse-Lautrec

Contemporary Abstract

van Gogh

Monet

The Impressionists were not the only artists working with a new way of seeing. The Italian Futurists and the Cubists were developing imagery that showed movement and multiple perspectives. Below on the left is a Futurist painting of a woman walking her dog, on the right a timeflow photo of a woman walking her dog. The next screens show Futurist images compared to time-flow photos.

In the last comparison, here is a photo on the left by the photographer mentioned before, Anton Bragaglia. He took photos of continuous motion over time. Time-flow photography also records unbroken motion and, so in a sense, is picking up where he left off 100 years ago -- but now using the new tools of digital photography.

Understanding The Effects Of Motion With Long Shutter Speeds Some people believe that the effects of movement in long shutter speed photography are more or less the same and accidental. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a quite sophisticated vocabulary, a physics of motion, that can be understood and once understood is not accidental.

Subject Movement Camera Movement Subject & Camera Movement Relative Movement Absolute Movement Stillness & Movement in the same shot Ghosting Negative Ghosting Multiple Exposure Effects Light Painting

Subject Movement -- the cab is moving but the pavement is sharp --

Subject Movement -- the fireworks & rides are moving but the parked cars are sharp --

Subject Movement -- a big band playing energetically on TV combined with an 8 second shutter speed and an unmoving camera created this shot --

Subject Movement -- in a 4 second handheld self-portrait, the moving images on the TV screen paint and created the abstract design --

Camera Movement -- the camera in a moving car 'paints' the traffic lights in a long exposure --

Camera Movement - the camera in a moving car 'paints' traffic lights on rain on a windshield -

Camera Movement -- taken at the same place, the photo on the left is a sharp photo, while on the right, the camera paints the light to make an abstract design --

Camera Movement -- taken at the same place as the previous photo, controlled camera movement, known as 'camera painting', created this abstract design --

Subject & Camera Movement -- the camera panned with the moving go-kart --

Subject & Camera Movement -- in a moving car with moving traffic after a rain, the tail lights of cars made an interesting abstract design --

Subject & Camera Movement -- in a moving car, the background streaked, but the camera was stationary relative to the driver who was moving as she drove --

Subject & Camera Movement -- this is a panning shot of a person walking at night with a lantern near a bay; the light in the background was light on the water that streaked as I panned with the moving person --

Absolute Movement (a Futurist concept) the general direction of a person or car or object in motion

Relative Movement (a Futurist concept) internal movement within the object such as tires rotating on a car as it moves forward or feet moving back and forth as a person walks

In this shot the car is moving to the left, but the wheels are turning with their own relative motion

Absolute & Relative Movement -- panning with a group of people as they walked made their bodies fairly sharp while their feet and arms were blurred with relative motion --

Absolute & Relative Movement -- panning with people walking makes their bodies fairly sharp while their feet are blurred with relative motion --

Stillness & Movement In The Same Shot -- with the camera anchored to the dashboard, the car's hood is sharp but the traffic lights are streaked --

Stillness & Movement In The Same Shot

Ghosting -- ghosting describes the faint wisp of a moving person in a shot, often with the background showing through transparently --

Ghosting -- with a dark background, light movement is painted against the darkness in a long exposure --

Ghosting

Negative Ghosting -- a light background 'eats' around the edges of a central figure in a long exposure --

Negative Ghosting

Mixed Movement -- a variety of motion: a turning Ferris Wheel & the ghosting caused by some people moving while others stand still --

Mixed Movement -- panning with the man walking his bicycle is one motion while the random motion of the crowd in front is another --

Multiple Exposure Effects -- in this shot I painted the TV screen multiple times against the dark background with camera movement --

Multiple Exposure Effects -- against a dark background, different movements can be recorded in a single photograph with a long exposure --

Multiple Exposure Effects

Light Painting -- in a long exposure with a dark background, you can paint with a flashlight or other light source, just like using a paint brush --

Light Painting

White Balance These two shots were taken in the same place. The difference was due to the camera's white balance setting. Changing the white balance can create different sets of colors.

White Balance

In this shot I had a choice to two different sets of colors. The blue area you see, which was daylight coming through a window, could have been set to white which would have made the white area become orange (i.e., light from indoor light bulbs). Instead I set the light from the indoor light bulbs to white which made the outdoor light turn to blue and created the effect I wanted.

Handheld vs. Steady With digital you can shoot at very slow shutter speeds handheld, especially with practice. Nevertheless there will probably be a bit of camera shake over 1 second. Or you can anchor the camera on a tripod or monopod. Yet, handheld gives you the most flexibility. In this example, the camera on the left was anchored to the dash of the car, the photo on the right was taken handheld.

How To Experiment If you want to discover new untried effects, then experimenting is the way to go. Most of what I have written here had never been done before with digital -and only on a very limited basis with film, as it was too expensive and time consuming.

But There Is An Art To Experimentation

How To Experiment In these next 8 screens you will see what I accomplished in an hour at a county fair. The first photo is a natural sharp shot of a Ferris Wheel. Then I took shots at a slow shutter speed as the wheel turned. Later I added camera movement to create the effects in the last screens. This was one of my first digital experiments with motion. The immediate feedback of the LCD monitor showed me whether I was on the right track.

How To Experiment

How To Build On Your Discoveries -- once I had mastered taking steady shots with a camera anchored to my dash seen here, I added new elements as you will see next; btw I did these with another person driving --

How To Build On Your Discoveries -- because rain does such wonderful things to light, I took the same basic traffic light picture as before but with rain on my windshield --

How To Build On Your Discoveries -- next I took the same shot but focused on the windshield instead of the distant lights, which created a different color effect --

How To Build On Your Discoveries -- in this last shot, I focused on large drops of rain on the windshield, which act like lenses --

How To Build On Your Discoveries -- before I took candid shots of cars, I went to a go-kart track where the road and the lighting were constant and predictable; once I had mastered panning under these conditions, I moved on to candid shots of cars --

How To Build On Your Discoveries -- next I found a place in the downtown where the light was good and began taking candid shots while panning --

How To Build On Your Discoveries -- this candid panning shot is in perfect sync with the car; the outline of the car is quite sharp --

How To Build On Your Discoveries -- then I went on to candid shots in the rain; since roads are black, rain is often required to light up the surface below the car --

How To Build On Your Discoveries -- my success with panning led to shots of tail lights of cars --

Putting These Effects Into Practice The following photographs were created with effects outlined earlier in this PowerPoint presentation. They include shots of sparklers, camera painting, rave dancers, and musicians in motion. They are shown without further comment.