Why I Shoot Pictures Out of Focus

My most recent work I'm often asked the question why do you always take pictures out of focus? 

Taking Pretty Pictures Can Be Boring

It all started a number of years ago on a trip to Santa Fe when we stopped at a place called Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks Tent Rocks. Tent Rocks was a special place that was hard not to take a good photograph. It was so perfect for landscape photography. But later on when I got these images home, I printed six or eight and they were gorgeous photographs - they were beautiful. When I was asked to show them to a small group of people and I spread them out, the beautiful photographs were just beautiful photographs. So I decided there had to be something else that.

Why Is Everyone taking the same Photo?

Now if we fast forward a couple of years later; on a trip to Death Valley we were all standing at Zabriskie point and at 6:00 a.m. in the morning. It was dark and there were a couple people waiting for sunrise. At 6:20 there were about 50 people and by 6:45 when the sun started to rise from behind us there was probably about 200 waiting to take pretty much the same photo.

I Found Something Different

That’s when I decided I wanted to do something different, so started to move the camera during the exposure. Later I found out taking long exposures while moving the camera is a technique known as Intentional Camera Movement (ICM). ICM photography involves longer exposures, multiple layers and blend modes with the use of  neutral density filters so you can extend exposures to a second or two in broad daylight.the results were 

Why I like My Results

The results are a painterly and very interesting. As I've gone through the last couple of years I’ve experimented more and more with the technique I find that the results seem to communicate the aspect of time and space and break away from the normal pretty, sharp focused picture and that's why my photographs (seem) out of focus. 

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