The Shape of Light IV by Joel Tjintjelaar (used with permission)

What makes a great image? Composition, lighting, timing, post-processing? All of those are important, but they won’t get you very far without vision. Vision sounds like a very vague concept, but I like to describe it as the ability to see what a shot or a scene could become when approached in a certain way. However, you can have lots of vision and still not produce any great images if you don’t take action and actually create the shot you envisioned.

A good example is the above image by Joel Tjintjelaar. It shows a building in the center of Rotterdam. I have walked past this building many times, and so have probably millions of other people. But they didn’t take the time to look at it, didn’t have a vision or didn’t take action. That’s one of the interesting things about photography: it’s always possible to find new and interesting shots in places that you would think have been photographed to death.

But where does inspiration come in? To me personally, inspiration isn’t something that just happens. Often I set out with a certain goal or rough idea, and along the way some other subject or angle catches my eye. Inspiration is something that fuels your imagination and gives you the drive to keep going. But you have to get going in the first place. The more you explore, the more inspiration.

By the way, also make sure to check out Joel’s website bwvision.com for more amazing long exposure photography (and some interesting tutorials), and his Google+ profile.

Recently I created this short experimental piece based on the idea of a long exposure timelapse. I was trying to come up with a way to create the effects and style often seen in long exposure photography, but in motion. A lot of timelapse videos seem to have something rushed about them, and I wanted to create a more Zen-like feel, as it were.

My first thought was to take a number of long exposure photos, and create a time lapse out of those in the usual manner. The problem with that is that, because of the long exposure, you can only create one or two frames per minute. If you were to create a timelapse sequence out of those images, any motion would seem incredibly fast, quite the opposite of what we set out to achieve.

Then I came across a Final Cut Pro plugin named Long Exposure, created by CHV Plugins, that blends together a number of frames before and after the current frame, thus creating a long exposure effect out of regular, short exposure frames.

An added benefit is that this helps a lot to reduce any flicker because of differences in exposure of individual frames in the original footage. This usually results from the lens not opening up to the exact same aperture for every shot, even though it’s set to manual. There are workarounds to avoid this, but we won’t go into too much technical detail here.

One drawback of this way of working is that you can’t do any slider moves or any other forms of camera motion during the shoot, since that will blur everything in the shot. Only the parts of the image that don’t move will end up not being blurred. Of course you could apply some zooming or panning in post, or do some compositing to simulate camera motion. In this case I decided to keep it very simple though. I’m planning to experiment some more with this techique in the future. Stay tuned...

Edited in Final Cut Pro X, graded with Magic Bullet Looks.

Soundtrack: Bane (Architect Remix) by Hecq. Get it on iTunes (and make sure to check out his other stuff)

If you are looking for a cool wallpaper for your desktop, iPad or iPhone, head over to makaikemaui.com, where Shane Robinson offers a number of his amazing intentional camera movement images as free downloads. It was actually Shane's work that inspired me to start experimenting with ICM photography. The above image, titled "Cruising #3", is one of my personal favorites.

I've been experimenting with a more graphical, minimalist type of intentional camera movement photography lately. These are some of the first results. They were made by photographing a Litepanel MicroPro, a small LED panel that is normally used for lighting video shoots. It's composed of lots of tiny LED lights, that form very points of light, even at a relatively low power setting. Because of that, it's very easy to create high contrasts and make the background go completely black. The only difficulty is that it's very obvious if they're out of focus, because in that case you won't get nice crisp lines. Some more images after the link...

It's always interesting to see what happens when two creative minds collaborate. Motion & sound designer Woob and time lapse photographer Samuel Cockedey took the genre of the time lapse film to a whole new level. The edgy soundtrack, creative processing of the footage and the timing all work together to create something very unusual and intrigueing. When it comes to music I often find a remix of a track more interesting than the original, beceause there's this extra layer of depth that comes from the creative input of the remixer. The same thing goes for this video as well. Great work guys, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of this kind of collaboration on Vimeo.

If you're attending the Masters in Motion conference in Austin you might spot some of my lightscapes images on the screen. The conference brings together directors/DPs like Vincent Laforet, Philip Bloom and Tom Guilmette, who will share their knowlegde and let aspiring filmmakers get their hands on cool toys like the Phantom Flex and Red Epic.

I've already posted some hints and teasers here before and today I finally finished my short film inspired by the Audi A1. I decided once again to go for a contrasty black & white look, with some red accents. The film burn effect that you see in some shots was actually created by overlaying some intentional camera movement photos of the rear light of the car. I thought it would be more interesting to experiment a little instead of using some ready-made effect.

The soundtrack is "Meanwhile Back in the Jungle" by Massiv in Mensch (available on iTunes).

I shot this near Oostvoorne, looking out over a large protected nature area. The interesting thing is that in the distance (click on the image to enlarge) you can see the industrial landscape of the Rotterdam harbour. It makes for a interesting and subtle contrast, one which you will only notice on closer inspection. I like it when you can explore an image and there's more to it than meets the eye at first glance.

Here's another little preview from the same project as last post. As you can tell I'm trying to merge two distinct looks: one contrasty black & white look, and another with some intense color accents. Stay tuned for more...

I thought I'd start sharing some more behind-the-scenes and work-in-progress stuff on the blog, since that's what I usually like reading on other blogs. It's great to see the end result, but even more fun to get a glimpse of how it all comes together.

On that note, above is a still from a video project I'm currently working on. It's a different take on my Lightscapes work, where I try to create interesting effect using long exposures. The difference is that usually I do this by moving the camera around (it's not called Intentional Camera Movement photography for northing), but in this case I move the light around while the camera stands still. The reflection of the moving light source, in this case a LitePanel Micro Pro, creates an interesting sense of motion. Will share more as the project progresses. Stay tuned...