You've probably seen the dreamy, abstract shots that photographers create and wonder how on earth they've done it? ICM is an incredibly useful technique to add to your landscape photography toolkit, so let's explore how to create successful ICM images that will WOW!
ICM (or intentional camera movement) is an artistic yet often misunderstood landscape photography technique. Generally, we try very hard to keep our cameras still to avoid camera shake or blurry shots. But with ICM you are deliberately moving your camera whilst the camera is taking the shot to achieve a dreamy, abstract look and feel to your images.
Ideally you want to find simple landscape scenes with clean lines either vertically or horizontally, which is why a beach with just sand, sea and sky, or a forest with trees works so well, or even a close up of a plant (like in the image below). If you have prominent land visible in a beach scene it won't look good, and nor do vertical shots with the sky included as it tends to blow out sections of the image. The best approach is KISS - minimal, less busy scenes with only a few colour tones.
You don't need any fancy gear, but a tripod and ND filters can be useful depending on the type of shot and available light, let me explain why!
If you want to do a horizontal pan (for example at a beach), putting your camera on a tripod and using the horizontal pan function will give you much greater control over keeping your horizontal plane straight ultimately giving you better results. A tripod is also useful if you want to do a zoom-in ICM shot to keep everything steady, then you only have to worry about moving your zoom with one hand while you press the shutter or remote with the other, more on that below.
If there is TOO much light for you to slow your shutter speed down enough to capture ICM, then an ND filter will help - it's basically like putting a pair of dark sunglasses over your camera lens to block out light allowing you to lengthen your exposure time. My filters of choice are the Kase Filters Armour Kit and Kase Revolution Professional ND kit. The strength of ND required will depend on the lighting situation, you might find you need a 6-stop or even a 10-stop on a very bright day.
Shutter speed - this will vary depending on the effect you want to create, personally I find 1/5 of a second works well for me to get the results I like, but I know others who shoot slightly longer, i.e. 0.5 second too - you'll get to learn what suits your style and your natural speed of movement the best and find your own sweet spot.
Aperture - this is actually irrelevant to the result as shutter speed is all important, so just choose the aperture that allows you to get your desired shutter speed. You might find that narrowing your aperture even as far down as f/22 will reduce the light coming in to slow your shutter speed down to the desired time when there's more light around. While most landscape photographers will tell you to shoot at f/8-f/11 for optimal sharpness, having a sharp, focused image isn't our goal with ICM, we want that soft, dreamy ethereal effect so any aperture goes!
ISO - in general you can keep it as low as possible (i.e. ISO 100) and concentrate on getting the right mix of aperture and shutter speed for the effect to work.
Focal length - in general a longer focal length is better (think 70mm), this reduces barrel distortion around the edges of your image that occur when you use a wider angle. It's easy to think you need to pan through a large section of your scene when in fact the opposite is true, you usually only need a small amount of the scene for ICM to have maximum effect.
There are several different and unique techniques that work well to get the ICM effect, but the main thing you need to master is this:
Whichever movement technique you use, start the motion a split second before you press the shutter and continue the movement during the exposure in order to achieve a smooth result.
This technique works well in open landscapes where you have an obvious distinction in multiple colour tones, like a beach where there are distinct differences in sand, sea and sky. Colourful sunrises and sunsets work well, and even middle of the day shots where there is nice lighting. Zoom in to around 70mm and pan across the scene.
The image below was taken looking straight down from the side of the ship at the golden light hitting the waves as they broke underneath the ship during golden hour.
In this image below, you can see that because I was only shooting at 35mm, there is a wee bit of edge distortion top and bottom of the frame.
This technique works well in forests or anywhere where there are vertical lines of colour to work with, my personal favourite type of scene to work with is autumn colours contrasting with tree trunks.
Try to avoid barrel distortion around the edges of your scene by zooming in to a smaller section of the scene. Where possible avoid very bright highlights (i.e. the sky) from being included, so again you many only need a very small section of your scene, think starting at the forest floor and moving up to include only a small amount of the trees. Whereas the horizontal technique suits very smooth lines, I often prefer my vertical shots to have a bit of obvious texture.
In the shot below, I used the light highlighting the dead tree trunks on the opposite side of the lake and the reflection in the water for a vertical ICM image.
I like to call this the 'warp-speed' technique. As I mentioned earlier, if you put the camera on a tripod for this one, you'll get a much cleaner result. Focus on an object in the middle of your scene to allow this object to appear most in focus, then start to zoom your lens a split second before you press the shutter, ensuring that you keep moving the zoom throughout the exposure.
This technique allows you to just get creative, you can actually do any kind of movement you want, like whipping the camera from a horizontal to vertical position and back again while shooting, or doing wiggles or diagonal movement with your camera for a very ethereal, floaty and abstract result.
In this first image below you can see I've moved on the diagonal to achieve a sweeping feel to the shot.
ICM allows you to be far more expressive and creative than when shooting a traditional landscape scene. I find it quite interesting that when I set up to intentionally shoot ICM, it's often my first shot that I prefer the best, and then it's very hard to replicate as every shot is completely unique and different. A good rule of thumb to work on is keeping 1 in every 50 or 100 shots. At the end of the day, using a digital camera means you can just and keep the keepers and delete everything else!
Sometimes the weather just doesn't give you what you want, you might get a clear sky sunrise or sunset at the beach or a moody morning lacking in colour. That's when your ICM skills need to come out of your back pocket, so you can still get shooting instead of sitting sulking in the car! Since ICM is so subjective and expressive, you just might find you walk away with an image you love far more than what you originally set out intending to shoot.
And even if you are out getting the fabulous conditions you dreamed of, it is still worth giving ICM a go at some stage during your shoot to add some interesting variety to your shots! The two images below show the actual landscape scene I was shooting vs the ICM image created at approximately the same time.
Abstract, ICM images make great fine art prints, so don't let your creativity just sit gathering dust on your hard drive, be sure to print your favourites out to enjoy!
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