A Different Sort of Joined Up Picture

Whitebeam, North Walls Park

On the web, it is good form be generous with your attribution. So this is how I came to make these pictures...

I've enjoyed staring out of the window on my rain commute to Portsmouth over the past few weeks looking up at the still bare trees that line the route. As the train speeds by one gets a good look at the three dimensional nature of the tree as it relatively rotates. And as I've enjoyed this vision I've wondered about how I might try to capture this as a photo. For a long time I've been an admirer of the multiple exposure photography of Chris Friel, and I've thought that I might try this method to capture the trees. Friel is also an exponent of long-exposure, intentional camera movement images. I've tried this before, and I've not really enjoyed it. As soon as you hit the shutter you are shooting blind. Getting a good image is largely a matter of serendipity, and it's all a bit too much hit-or-miss for me. His multiple exposure images are made in-camera, but my G3 does not have this feature so I've not really given the method much consideration.

Willow, North Walls Park

Recently I was on Amazon looking for books about artisitic inspiration and so had a browse through Amazon's suggestions. I ended up buying two books by Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work, which I've enjoyed hugely. Looking on Kleon's blog I came across the joiners of David Hockney that I know well, and the joiners of Pep Ventosa. So browsing Ventosa's website I found his gallery In the Round, which was the inspiration for these new images.

Hawthorne, North Walls Park

I think that there is a lot to explore in this technique. All of these images were composited in Photoshop as 16 bit tiffs and then edited in Lightroom. I like the way the background is de-emphasised, and how the image contains elements of different times and viewpoints. I need to experiment with the amount of movement and the number of frames. Early days; I have lots of ideas to explore...