Explor­ing the East­ern Sierra south of Lee Vin­ing in the Fall of 2008, I ended up at Con­vict Lake rather late one morn­ing. Later than I would have liked. For­tu­nately for me, how­ever, there was a large cloud bank on the east­ern hori­zon which blocked the sun and cre­ated a nice even light­ing deep in the groves of aspen at the far end of the lake. Although some of the groves along the shore still had a blaze of yellow-orange leaves, what really struck me was the con­trast of these bril­liant white trunks against the yel­low and green grass in one small grove near the inlet stream.

Impres­sion­ist images like these (which I have grouped in a land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy series I call Motion|Pictures) take time to work out. You have to find the appro­pri­ate shut­ter speed for the desired blur and the right cam­era move­ment for the sub­ject, then work out how to cap­ture the com­po­si­tion you want as the cam­era moves — which often takes a fair amount of trial-and-error. Every­one who uses this tech­nique has their own method, and mine is fairly sim­ple: I set the shut­ter on Con­tin­u­ous and fire away as I move the cam­era across my intended com­po­si­tion. The mir­ror flips up and down as I shoot, giv­ing me momen­tary flashes of the scene in the viewfinder, which I use to adjust my move­ments. Then I review my shots on the LCD (thank good­ness for dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy!), and if I fail to cap­ture the image I have in mind (which I usu­ally do), I try again. And again. Some­times I get the right motion-blur, but not the com­po­si­tion. Some­times vice versa. And once in a while, in one or two or three hun­dred shots, I hit the bull’s-eye.

Tech­ni­cal Data:
Body: Canon EOS Dig­i­tal Rebel XSi
Lens: Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM at 40mm
Expo­sure: ISO 100, f/16, 0.7 second