Emery Park Forest AbstractLong Exposure Motion Blur This morning photo outing reminded me of one topic I mentioned in many of my posts (e.g., Plan but Welcome the Random, Adapt, aka Plan but Welcome the Random, Nature's Call, Another Unplanned and Unexpected Fun with the Camera, Revisiting Locations & The Unplanned).

The autumn colors around here are kicking into a higher gear and I wanted to combine two things into one this morning. I wanted to capture some fun fall foliage and also try to find the 4th Emery Park waterfall that I have not photographed yet. I had my doubts about the water levels in the small creeks but wanted to try anyway.

As I was walking around using a small waterfall location map stored on my phone and trying to match my position with the map, I got to a spot that had a lot of mostly "straight" trees that were dense, yet spaced out just right and the back-light  was streaming through.

The idea immediately entered my mind. I set up on a tripod first, selected a small aperture for a good depth of field, and tried to capture what it felt like during that first second that I spotted the scene. The photos looked ok as a document of the reality in front of me but did not represent the feeling I was after. Off the tripod the camera went, settings pretty much unchanged. Instead of keeping it stationary during the exposure I slowly moved it up blurring the reality in front of me into a better depiction of the mood.

Forest of Imagination in ColorPhotograph of Mood I tried quite a few, played with the exposure length, motion speed, and tested out where to start and where to and. With these camera motion blurs I usually prefer the shorter shutter speeds around 1 or 2 seconds to keep the abstracts recognizable and somewhat close to reality but here, the two photos I picked were both over 5 seconds. I did not like the ones where I moved too high up into the sky. The strong bright patches that spilled into the woods that way just did not feel right. On the other hand, starting quite a bit lower on the ground under the trees worked well for me.

Later on the computer I felt the abstract vertical lines did not necessarily need color to establish the right mood and I went monochrome, using Silver Efex Pro 2. The closing photo is what I believe gets the closest to what the section of the forest felt like.

Forest of ImaginationA photograph of Mood

Now do you remember what my plan was? A colorful autumn photograph with a waterfall in it? I hope that explains what I meant by planning but keeping an open mind.

Have fun no matter what nature throws at you!

Equipment used:

• Nikon D600
• Nikon 24-85mm Nikkor Lens
• No filters, a long exposure, slow camera motion upwards
• Think Tank Speed Demon Waist Pack,  Petzl Zipka Plus 2 Headlamp (always in the bag just in case), SanDisk Extreme 32GB SD Cards
• Nikon Capture NX2
• Silver Efex Pro 2

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