Sometimes in photography, as in life, a deliberate break from the norm is required in order to refresh our thinking.
In the bad old days this photo, taken looking out to sea from Llandudno's West shore at sunset, would have come back from the processing lab with a little yellow quality control sticker on the print, including helpful advice on how to take a sharp photo by not moving the camera. Ha! How times have changed.
With the advent of digital imaging photographers are now able to have much more artistic input into their images than was ever the case with film, not least in the way that you can take a hundred experimental shots just to get one keeper at no cost, which is what I did here with this panning shot.
I was able to experiment with different shutter speeds and panning speeds until I got the effect I wanted. There's no way I could have afforded to do that with film.
On top of that you can capture a really flat boring image in RAW format, only to have it contain so much more information than you could ever get onto a piece of film, with the increased possibilities for further artistic interpretation in post processing.
But what's the purpose of all this jiggery-pokery?
Well when I compare what I'm able to express now with digital with what I could achieve in the old days of film I would say that my final images now bring out much more of the emotions and moods that I was feeling at the time the photo was taken.
In fact, I'm able to express much more of my personality with digital than I ever could with film, and isn't art, after all is said and done, an expression of the artist?
Filename - wave blur 01.jpg
Camera - Canon 5D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 40mm
Exposure - 1/13sec @ f22, ISO50
Location - Llandudno, North Wales
This image - 800x533px JPEG
Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2
Comments - Image intentionally blurred by panning during the exposure.
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