The Unprepared Way

This is my usual method. I go out planning landscapes or wildlife and come across a forest of tall, straight trees that take my fancy. Sometimes I have my CPL with me, but unless I was going waterfall hunting, I wouldn’t normally have the ND filters, so I always improvised.

Settings for intentional camera blur

The whole idea is to set your camera for a longer exposure (to allow you to move it while the shutter is open) without overexposing it. To do this, I set my F stop as high as it can go, which, on my camera, is F22. Next, I lower the ISO to as low as I can go. On the old Canon 7D, it was 100, but on the Olympus, I can get down to 64. These two settings will allow you exposure anywhere from 1/2 second to a couple – depending on if it’s a cloudy or sunny day (and if you are clever enough to have that CPL or ND in the bag).

Once you have your settings dialled in, focus on your subject – don’t just shoot and move the camera. Then it’s just a matter of pressing the shutter – and moving the camera simultaneously. I favour a short, quick upward motion when shooting the trees. It is trial and error. The entire process depends on your movement – fast will blur a lot, and slower will blur a little. I usually come home with many images, then cull down to those I like.

I have done both handheld and on a tripod. Handheld works fine. The tripod works fine. I didn’t find one worked better than the other. I used the tripod because the camera was already on it, and I was too lazy to take it off.

The Prepared Way (in manual mode)

Being prepared or mindful of the possibility of getting some ICM (intentional camera movement) while out and about means you have an ND Filter – something around ND 4 or 6 or a CPL in your bag. This will darken down your scene and allow you to shoot at a lower Fstop or longer shutter speed. Otherwise, the settings are the same – lower the ISO, and if you shoot manually, adjust the shutter speed to suit.

Shoot in Shutter Priority

Another way is to shoot in Shutter Priority mode, set the ISO to the lowest – set the F stop to the highest and let the camera choose the shutter speed. You can also use an ND or CPL to lower the shutter speed further.

In the above slider, you can see the before and after the settings change. The before was taken to get my settings and exposure correct – the after is the second photo taken with the ICM. It can turn a bland scene into something quite appealing.

In a nutshell

• Lowest ISO
• highest F stop – around F22
• shutter speed to suit (or use shutter priority mode)
• focus on your subject
• move the camera while the shutter is open
• follow vertical lines in your composition – horizontal for beaches, vertical for trees

With intentional camera blur, how much is too blurred or not blurred enough is entirely up to your own personal tastes. As you can see, I like trees… you can do a horizontal one at the beach – or a completely abstract one by twisting it. I would love to see your images in the comments if you found this useful.

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