Inspiration can come in the strangest of ways and can be discovered in the oddest places. Along with this, experimentation can lead to the most interesting results that seem to present itself at the most unexpected time. Back in May of 2024 while I was on an artist residency in the south of France, near the small village of Gaja-la-Selve, I stumbled upon a space that would lead me to a new photography project.
I brought my photography gear to France and was taking photographs of anything and everything because I didn’t know exactly what kind of project I wanted to do while on the artist residency. I took photographs for many different reasons. Some photos were to document the place and what the other artists were doing there. Some photos were for and of abstract images. I took architectural photos, detail/close-up shots of texture and pattern on buildings or anywhere else, and anything else that I thought may be of interest. This included macro photography with images of nature. Particularly, of small details or other subject matter that was unlike anything I might find in my own neck of the woods in Ontario, Canada - like the mountains, local plant life, etc. And in doing this, I hoped I would stumble onto something that would lead to a project that I could further explore post residency.
One afternoon when I was well into the one-week artist residency, I went out into the barn to investigate. It was one of the few places that I had left to explore on the property of the retreat where we were staying. At dinner the evening before, I was informed by one of my fellow artists that the word Canadiennes (French for Canadians) was written on one of the walls inside the barn, along with some other text, also in French. Her description of the the barn’s interior sounded promising based on our discussion over dinner, so I was keen to check it out.
As expected, when I went inside the barn, there was a number of items being stored there including big rolls of hay in one corner, scrap metal, logs, various tools, a wheelbarrow and piles of wood. The interior architectural structure featured high ceilings with a large wooden roof and tall concrete slab walls, with two large openings on one side, where I assume giant doors once existed. The barn was used to store these various items, but it was also used as a garage to park vehicles. After spending a bit of time inside the barn, I became interested in the wood piles. Most of the wood was stacked on shelves along one wall, while the rest was in a pile on a work bench. The wood was of various colours. Some was a warm natural wood tone, others were painted a light blue – similar to that of a robin’s egg blue. This created a nice contrast of colours and the wood piles were neatly rested horizontally on the shelves of the walls.
At first I just photographed the interior setting to document the space itself, but as I grew more and more interested in the colourful wood piles, I thought about creating abstract images using my camera to achieve smooth lines of colour in an photo. I played with focus, shutter speed and exposure settings before deciding to try ICM Photography.
ICM or Intentional Camera Movement Photography is a technique that combines the use of a slower shutter speed and intentional movement of the camera to achieve a creative or artistic effect. Moving the camera while it’s exposing an image means that the elements within the frame won’t be frozen in place. This causes the subject in the image to move across the frame, producing varied effects such as streaking, textures, and layers in the resulting photograph. The characteristics of the subject matter will lose their natural appearance and the result is often described as producing a painterly effect. The longer the shutter speed, the more obscure the elements become. The main idea in ICM photography is that motion serves as the primary compositional element. The effects will vary based on the speed of motion that the camera is moving and the camera settings chosen, particularly the shutter speed that dictates the length of exposure time. The right combination can create some intriguing results.
I have experimented with ICM before and it is one of my favourite photography techniques. I use this technique pretty regularly and I am often pleasantly surprised by the results. It does take a bit of practice, sometimes a few tries, and several adjustments of your camera settings and speed of motion, to dial in on the effect you are looking to achieve. I love the abstract qualities that I have captured in some of my images and it is a fairly easy technique once you get the hang of it and that’s why I will continue to use this method. You can get such diverse abstract results from such a simple method. I also love this style because it brings me back to my roots as a painter. Back in the early days of art school, painting was one of the first mediums I worked in, and this method of photography feels like I am introducing painting techniques into my photographic works, as if to combine newer and older mediums from my many years of making to come full circle in my creation process within my art practice.
So there I was, inside a barn in the middle of the French countryside, dialing in different camera settings and whipping around in circles to find the right combo between camera settings and speed of motion. If anyone could see me, I must have looked foolish - spinning around in the barn with my camera in hand. But as the saying goes there’s a method to my madness and as I was working away in this deranged manner, I realized I was having fun and I had introduced a sense of play and experimentation in the process. I created an unexpected body of work using an very unlikely subject matter. I was really excited about the resulting images that I had captured and I was really looking forward to editing this project and of course, to see the final outcome of this experiment. I was so thrilled to have found what I needed to produce a body of work while on the artist residency. When I finally found time to edit the images many months later, I was still engaged with the images of the project. In the end, I achieved some interesting results with an interesting back story that grew out of a mundane subject matter. The lesson to be learned here is no matter how unlikely the inspiration might be, or how silly the exercise may seem, you should try anyways because the results may pleasantly surprise you.
Below is a gallery of photographs that are the results from this ICM experimentation
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