Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Swirling abstracts from everyday objects

 If you have a camera that allows you to take a photo while manually zooming the lens, some interesting abstract or semi-abstract images may be produced from ordinary objects that are close at hand.  Below you see two examples, both of which show the original scene near the lower right of the image. These were taken by setting the camera to shutter priority mode, and selecting a 1/2 second shutter speed. Then, while holding the lens zoom ring (starting at the wide angle position) and rotating the camera body (so that the lens zooms out to the telephoto position) during the exposure, the swirl effect was produced.  So, the basic idea here is to smear the image falling on the camera's sensor in two different ways simultaneously, by zooming out from wide angle to telephoto during the exposure while rotating the camera body rather than the lens zoom ring. It works on all sorts of subjects both indoors and out.  And with a digital camera, one can experiment freely to obtain just the right effect.

Swirling snowman container, Tamron 17-50mm lens


Swirling wall art, Tamron 17-50mm lens

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