When a Blurry Picture Says More
There was a time when a picture that wasn’t sharper than a tack ended up in my trash bin. That was long ago. Now, I make them that way on purpose.
Photographers refer to it as ICM (Intentional Camera Movement). It simply means you deliberately move the camera when the shutter is open. But it takes a fair bit of practice and there are lots of failures for the few that turn out well. That’s probably why we seldom used this method in the film days.
You may wonder WHY would you do that? Great question. There are two types of images you can create with this method. One is an impressionistic version of the scene before you. The other is an abstract image. In the words of a landscape painter, C. W. Mundy, The power of the suggestive is much greater than the statement of reality.
Recently, I was asked to give a Zoom presentation to a group of photographers on this topic. It was great because it forced me to go through my images and select the ICM photos that I liked and thought would be good examples. I also made a short video explaining my technique which I’ll include at the end.
So here are a few of my favourite ICM images, in various categories.
In the Forest








In the Garden





In Nature





Abstracts







For Photographers
Intentional Camera Movement is a technique that is not hard to do and you need no special equipment to do it. All cameras are capable. I encourage all my students to try it.
To see a demonstration of the technique, click below. Blur with a Purpose? Video.
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The Master strikes again!!! Wonderful.
Thanks, Joe. Good hearing from you.
A very enjoyable post Dennis, beautiful work on your ICMs and the video was well done…it articulates the process and thought well.
Thanks very much, Chris.
Well done, Dennis! Of course you know I’ve been doing these a while now, and love the technique and the results – when they work! What I love most is that they are one-of-a-kind, right? You have some lovely results here, and I know that you had a lot of rejects to get that one perfect ICM result! Thanks for sharing the video, too. It was nice to see you in ‘person’! One thing I would add; you mention that aperture doesn’t matter at all, but I have found that in certain images, images with depth, i.e. one tree closer to camera than the others behind it, a smaller aperture does make a difference in situations like that. For what you are showing, where the plane of focus is pretty much all the same, you don’t need a small aperture, for sure. Again, what a lovely collection!
Thanks so much, Brenda, for looking and for pointing that out. Right you are! Great to keep in touch.
Was great to revisit this icm video. Thanks so much Dennis.
Thanks, Vangie. You are welcome!