Ghost Forest
To blow away the cobwebs from the over-indulgence of the festive period, the wife and I decided to go for a walk around Delamere Forest in Cheshire on New Years Day. I took the opportunity to try out my new lens, the Canon 50mm F1.4 USM…..Santa was very generous this year…..:0)!
I also took the opportunity to try something a little different…..
I first saw this technique in an edition of Practical Photography magazine a number of months ago and I’ve just been waiting for the right opportunity to give it a go. It’s really very simple – whilst the shutter is open you slowly move the camera up or down in a steady vertical motion. Because the movement of the camera is vertical I think this works best with tall vertical subjects – hence the reason for choosing a forest.
For these four shots I was working with a range of shutter speeds from 0.5s to 1.6s and to get this in daylight hours (even in a forest with mid-winter light) I was working with an aperture of F16 and an ISO of 100. I’m not saying these are necessarily the best settings – when attempting something abstract like this its very much a case of trial and error – but I think these images work well. Of course the speed in which you move the camera up/down also has a major impact on the outcome.
Because of the abstract nature of these images, I felt I had scope for pushing the post-processing more aggressively than I would normally…..I have to say that I really enjoyed the creative freedom that this allowed.
I’m really pleased with this set of shots – I especially like the ghostly, ethereal quality of the finished images. I don’t think this will be the last-time that I attempt this technique.
Copyright: © The Photography of Mark Simms (2013). All rights reserved.
Mark Simms Photography 
13 Responses to “Ghost Forest”
I also saw this and promptly forgot! Thanks for reminding me, i am going to dig out the mag and have another read. The images are great by the way 😉
Thanks Karen, and cheers for the re-blog.
Reblogged this on karenlawrencephotography.
I get camera shake naturaly any way 🙂
Haha
[…] those of you who read my previous post, you will know that Liz and I went for a walk on New Years Day to Delamere Forest in […]
These are great, Mark!! Love them! 🙂
Thanks Calee – how was Morocco?
The countryside and the Atlas mountains were Great! Didn’t care much for Marrakech though, but nice to have seen it anyway. 🙂
[…] I thought it was a perfect opportunity to have another go at the “vertical panning” technique I first posted about here. […]
[…] Ghost Forest […]
I love this! I love abstracts. And the colors are amazing. Inspiring!
Thanks Teresa – I’m glad you like them…I like the abstract nature and the colours too…:0)