The level of detail digital cameras can produce these days is very impressive. But sometimes, as a viewer, I can feel lost in the details. Therefore once in a while, I like to take a different approach. Using multiple exposure or panning the camera washes out the details and I am left with an impression of the scene in front of me. The images I get remind me of the impressionist art movement.
This is the effect you get with multiple exposures (nine in this case).The same scene, but this time I panned the camera downwards.
We are in autumn and this is a great season to try this approach. At the beginning of the season there are still some green leaves and one gets some wonderful colour contrast with the leaves that have turned yellow or orange.
This scene is just to the left of the previous two images.It is not always easy to find a nice arrangement of the trees to create a balanced composition.This technique is greatly facilitated by the fact you can look at the results immediately on your LCD screen and adjust accordingly.How much of the ground shows in your image is not easy to control as it depends on where you stop panning the camera.It is harder to control panning the camera in a vertical position, which is why I have relatively few successful vertical compositions.
Near the end of the fall, one gets a wash of warm colours, yellow, orange and red.
In these three photographs, I picked one tree to be more prominent in the composition.I liked the diagonal created by the sloped ground.Not many green leaves left in this scene.
If you want to try this approach, you may be interested in the technical information. I shot these with a 35mm lens on a crop sensor camera (50mm equivalent full frame) at about 1/6sec shutter speed. The panning effect you get depends on your focal lens and how fast you pan the camera down. Feel free to experiment and note that it takes me a number of tries before I get an image I like.
I like to visit some of the same spots a number of times. The scene is always different. I had taken an image from roughly the same viewpoint a year or two before.This was the first time I got something I liked from this location.
Share this content on by
by 
