Impressionist Photography: Spring Forest Pans

This post is another instalment of my ongoing personal project involving impressionist photography. One of the ways to give photographs an impressionist look is camera movement during the exposure. The ensuing blurring of the image eliminates the details in the picture, and one is left with an ‘impression’ of the scene.

Blackford Hill Edinburgh impressionist picture of spring forest using the panning technique — I looked for a pleasing arrangement of the trees in my viewfinder before panning the camera a number of times to get this picture

Blackford Hill Edinburgh impressionist picture of spring forest using the panning technique in Photoshop — The effect in this photograph was obtained in Photoshop. It is hard to distinguish from the effect obtained in camera. I much prefer the latter in that it gives me much more satisfaction as a photographer to get it done right in the camera rather than on the computer.

The pictures in this post were taken at Blackford Hill, Edinburgh. Just like the multiple exposure technique of a couple of posts back, panning requires quite a bit of experimentation. Moving the camera during the exposure is a mechanical skill that must be practiced. Some fine tuning is required in order to achieve the proper amount of blurring of the image.