Eye See Em

ICM. Intentional Camera Movement.

Usually, you try to avoid camera movement when you take a shot. But it turns out that there’s this thing called ICM, where you – are you ready for this? – intentionally move the camera when you take the shot.

They should mention that in the name.

It takes a little bit of practice to manage your exposure (careful now) and other settings*, but when you have ‘togged a location to death, it’s something a bit quirky and the results can be… “interesting”. And because you are not paying for film, you can experiment to your heart’s content.

Here’s one I did earlier (last weekend):

I know it won’t be to everyone’s taste. I’m not even sure it’s really to mine, although I do like the simplicity and it really does provide a rather different take on a very familiar place.

The white line is hugely important and perhaps I should have made more of it.

It’s not really Rothko, but can I see something of a background of a Turner there somewhere? Maybe.

Maybe not.

I’d like to see a bit more structure in my next efforts.

 

for example, this was f/36.0 and 1/4″ – barmy numbers!

Some more flight

Yesterday was an incredible day for flying the Mavic*. It’s now just about a year since I got this machine and the technology still blows me away every time I use it. I’ve flown over 140km in that time, in three different countries, desperately trying to improve my piloting and photography techniques each time I’m taken it up, and having a lot of fun along the way.

Here’s one from earlier:

What a day. What a place.

When I look back to the earliest photos I took, and remember how utterly terrifying those first flights were – very much like one’s first driving lessons – it’s almost amusing. I have much more confidence now (obviously) and measure my flight distances in km rather than 10s of metres. 🙂

Still room for improvement though. Always room for improvement!

Here are yesterday’s photos taken in and around beautiful Suiderstrand in Cape Agulhas.

 

* today may also be a good day, but I’m writing this yesterday, so I just don’t know yet.

Sneron

We came back from Cape Agulhas a day early. The weather was not looking like it was going to improve, the traffic looked like it was going to be horrendous and it’s actually been good to have a little bit of time at home before I head back to the laboratory tomorrow.
In actual fact, we only really lost a few hours, given that we only left late yesterday evening.

It meant that we could still get out for 5km along the beach at Suiderstrand, grab a photo of a windswept Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea):

…and have a lunch with some truly terrible service in L’Agulhas before heading off.
And we were still home before sunset. Cape Town summers, ne?

Rather than sit inside and blog all afternoon, we went for a family picnic in Kirstenbosch. And now I’m off to build some of this with my boy. So this is all you’re getting for today.

See you tomorrow. Same time, same place, right?

WSW

And so, without any more ado, and not ever so much fanfare, here’s one of the photos I took over the weekend. It’s quite dark (hey, it was night time), and so it looks MUCH better on black, but to look at it like that you’ll have to click through to Flickr here.

This was a 30 second exposure looking WSW (240.99º to be exact) from Suiderstrand bay. Next stop heading straight out from here is Necochea, Argentina, 6819.62 km across the South Atlantic.

But I didn’t go there. I wandered the 100m or so back up to the cottage and had a brandy.

Four photos from the weekend: here.

Quite Astonishing Sunset

Suiderstrand, this evening. Seriously (and I have given this some thought), the most amazing sunset I think I have ever seen.

This is the Instagram upload (but #nofilter, ok?) because I don’t have bandwidth and service to upload the “proper” pictures from out here in die bos.  I’ll tag a link to them when I get back to Cape Town, so come back tomorrow evening.

UPDATE: Here they are.

This evening, though?
Quite astonishing.