Experiments in the autumn forest

What would you call photographic Impressionism? And where is the boundary between Impressionism and Abstraction? Does such a boundary exist, and is it even important?

Personally, I consider Impressionism in landscape photography to be a genre where anything goes. There are no rules. Essentially, it's a genre of photographic anarchy.

The goal is not to capture the landscape as it is, for example during a beautiful sunrise or sunset. Rather, the aim is to translate a feeling, an impression of a scene into a photograph.

Deliberately blurred, almost painterly in appearance, or even making viewers believe they can see brushstrokes - these are the typical characteristics of an impressionistic painting.

Possible techniques for experiments in this direction could include:

* Movements using the zoom range of the lens

* Panning, i.e., camera movements during exposure

* Rotational movements

* On windy days, photograph grass or trees using very long exposure times (with or without a tripod)

* Double exposures

* Blending different photographs in post-processing

...and so on. The only limit is your own imagination.

Impressionist Techniques: Intentional Camera Movement

This technique allows one to create intentional blurring, remove details, or even completely break down the complexity of a scene into mere blocks of crude shapes, tones, and colors.

It's actually quite simple – you move the camera while the shutter is open. That's all there is to it.

The logical consequence is that you need to use quite long exposure times to achieve a pleasing blur. You can achieve this either by using a very small aperture or by employing ND filters of varying strengths (experimentation is key here). It's also helpful to avoid experimenting with such long exposures in bright sunlight or around midday – foggy days or dusk will further facilitate achieving long exposure times. Often, this method works even without filters.

Unlike classic landscape photography, you don't need to worry about ultimate sharpness - or rather: sharpness is completely irrelevant here!

This autumn I experimented with this technique myself. I went into the autumnal woods right behind my house with my camera and practiced moving it quickly from top to bottom using long exposure times (around one second or more). This direction of movement is particularly useful when using trees as subjects for your experiments.

At home, I then prepared the images as square fine art prints: the prints on coarse-fibered Hahnemühle handmade paper look wonderful! Atmospheric, surprising, different... expressionistic indeed.

Here are some examples of my "efforts":