Day 125: Slip of the Frame

2026-06-11

Hello! I'm still not back home yet.

I'll be able to talk about this trip as a whole with better accuracy once it's in the past and I have the power of hindsight and recollection, rather than an unfiltered and live stream of thought put into writing.

In the meantime, I'll just focus on this one image.

This image was taken with intentional camera movement, similar to my blue February photo of snowy tree branches. That photo was done without any preparation or foresight, but this photo of the rocky coastline was prepared.

To start, the intentional camera movement is perfectly horizontal because I had my camera placed on a tripod. I took multiple different photos, each with slightly different exposure settings, while I whipped the camera around to certain extents. I was surprised by how small a shift was needed to blur the photo to a significant degree.

I was inspired by the works of Mark Cornick from the UK, who specializes in this intentional camera movement and published a whole book on blurry abstract photos taken on coastlines like this one. I haven't directly copied his style: for one, I've used a tripod, which Mark views as restrictive. For another, his preferred season for this type of photography is the stormy winter, while I've taken this on a cloudless summer morning.

On this trip, I've done a lot of long exposure photography and quite a few bits of intentional camera movement, but this might be the best one so far. I'm not going to publish every photo on this here website (although I'd like to print some of my photos out for a physical display), so you just get the highlights.

Finally, classic photographers with inspiration for the current day. V.H. Belvadi lists five photographers who have provided him a reliable "well of inspiration" to draw from. I've been tempted to borrow photography books before, and this might push me over the edge.

Cheers,
David