In November I am taking part in a Camera Mode Challenge – where the idea is to challenge yourself to learn more about your camera mode settings and to try something new.
One of the things I have never done is try daylight ICM or intentional camera movement.
I am inspired by these kinds of images of abstract seascapes made with ICM
So today I decided to give it a go.
Tools used:
Canon 7d mk ii with 17 – 55 F 2.8 IS lens on
Lee 10 stop filter
Handheld
First problem – all my batteries were flat *sigh* so I had to charge one first.
Next I went out and set up the camera with a fixed focus point (selected it in camera and flicked over to manual focus on the lens to lock it) and put the filter on.
Switched to Tv (shutter priority mode) and started playing with the shutter speeds. Except everything I tried around 3-5 seconds came out black.
After lots of mucking around I solved it by cranking my camera exposure all the way to +3 and it compensated for the very dark 10 stop filter and allowed me a 3 sec shutter speed.
When taking shots of flowers more than that was too long and it just became a blurry mess.
Blurry mess!
I found with the flowers that an UP DOWN movement was nicer to me than the side to side option
And you can get subtle textural differences, the above image is more of a straight up and down, where as the below image was down at one angle and up at another and gave a nice cross hatch texture
For the Watsonia flowers I found I preferred more obvious flower shapes in the image like this one below where you can see the individual florets and an idea of the stem.
Too much movement just made a big pink mess which is perfectly OK too, just not what appeals to me personally.
Different angles and speed of movement on the same subject give quite different outcomes. You can just stand there and click and move the camera in all kinds of different ways, never quite knowing what you will end up with.
So there you go – my first learning experience with ICM – was more complicated to set up on my camera than I expected. I need a lighter grade ND filter I think.
Does anyone else do ICM? Got some tips to share?
Learning to See Light 
Try rotating the camera; the center of the image stays relatively sharp, and the edges have nice streaks.
Interesting idea, thx
Beautiful work – well done!
I don’t have any tips, but I just wanted to say that I think experimentation is good as a way to learn, so I enjoyed looking through this post.
Im all about the experiment
Saw your post and now feel inspired to try it out – trying out ICM in my garden feels more comfortable than a trip to the beach in UK Spring weather!
Thanks, its a lot of fun and once you get the hang of it, easy to do. Then its just getting the right angle of movement and amount of blur.