https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/woodman-space-providence-rhode-island-1975-1978-ar00350 [accessed 2nd March 2019]
I take inspiration from this series and aimed to use slow shutter speed to introduce motion within the frame. My intention in this exercise is to go further by aiming to give the impression of movement, kinetic energy in a more pure form by removing a connection to any particular object.
I started this exercise with a desire to reprise the previous exercise with slow shutter speed. In the previous exercise Freeze, I captured a swan in mid self wash, with fast shutter and so captured in sharp resolution frozen motion, my intention being to convey the idea of motion in a static sharp image.
I set out to find the same swan in the hope she was again washing herself, my hope being i could capture a swirling frenzy of feathery white in a ball of motion. This image i can picture in my mind and imagine this to be almost if not completely unidentifiable as a swan. There would be too much movement for the subject to be clear. I have not been lucky enough to find the swan in mid wash over a number of attempts during the last couple of weeks.
However I have to captured a similar set of images that are even stronger in representing the vision I have in my mind. My method was to try a few different shutter speeds from around 1/10s to 1s in an attempt to capture the flight of a seagull, where it is not apparent that the subject is a seagull or actually identifiable as anything at all. With the subject being ambiguous at best, what the observer is left with is purely movement of an abstract form. This i think is very interesting and worthy of much experimentation and investigation.
This example is one from the experimentation process as I approached the best shutter speed and subject. It is a shot of a swimming duck taken at 0.6s and is almost what i am looking for. It is however still possible to discern that this is a duck all be it transformed into a blur of movement. The fact that the observer can see this is a duck influences their impression of the image. I am looking to remove anything that detracts from the impression of pure movement, kinetic energy. That said I still find this image very attractive and interesting.
ƒ/29.0 44.0 mm 0.6s ISO 100
With a shutter speed of 0.4s I found an exposure time which transforms the flight of a seagull into what for me looks like the transposition of matter into pure energy. We see the world with a limited window across the spectrum of time, just as we see only a tiny slice of the electromagnetic spectrum. In this exercise i wonder how the world would look if we could see across a wider or different spectrum of time eg if we saw the world compressed into 0.4s slices these images are how a seagull in flight would appear to us. Very like how we perceive a humming bird in flight as a static object with a blur of wing flap. Other birds of a different size and wing, flight & speed would require a different shutter speed to achieve the effect seen here in these images.
Again i find this idea of movement in abstract form creating interesting and engaging images very attractive and worthy of further study.
ƒ/22.0 70.0 mm 0.6s ISO 100
Cropped and converted to monochrome in Lightroom
ƒ/18.0 70.0 mm 0.4s ISO 100
Cropped and converted to monochrome in Lightroom
ƒ/22.0 70.0 mm 0.4s ISO 100
Cropped and converted to monochrome in Lightroom 
This exercise has reminded me of a few photographs i have taken over the past years which follow a similar theme to varying degrees
This is a shot of a rock on a beach as the tide is starting to wash over and cover it. The effect for me is interesting and part of that is the ambiguity of the image itself. The abstract nature allows the observer to concentrate more on the aesthetic of the image itself, free from the connection to narrative.
ƒ/20.0 62.0 mm 8s ISO 50
x10,000 neutral density filter
This shot was taken hand held with long shutter speed introducing movement in both the subject and the camera itself, the result although less ambiguous is still similar in impression.
ƒ/16.0 50.0 mm 10s ISO 100
DKL_OCA_ExpressingYourVision_LearningLog 