January 2022 - The year begins!

January is the time for all those resolutions – the ones that you keep for the day you make them and then spend a week or so thinking of excuses … and then forget. 

This time, I need to be completely honest and admit that I didn’t take many photos last January, so my first picture is from 2020. 

(Actually, I don’t suppose that any of you really care about that!)

Can you remember back to January 2020: ‘pandemic’ was still a word that we rarely heard, and we were freely able to go out and about, without masks, without Covid passports. Little did we know about what was to come.

So, I went to the Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park one afternoon in mid-January; I was hoping to see some nice tree photos but instead came across this camellia opening its petals for all to see and to rejoice in. The leaves are just as striking, with their dark, glossy surfaces. This one was in the garden near Thomson’s Pond, which is the way I go after looking at (and loving) Peg’s Pond at the top of the Isabella. I’ve taken loads of photos of these beautiful flowers in the past and I wanted to do something a bit different this time.

I may have talked about ‘Intentional Camera Movement’ (also known as ICM by photographers) in the past – but just in case you haven’t read all my articles I’ll explain it now. It means that you move the camera deliberately while the photo is being taken. It works best if you are using a slow speed, less light (more movement), but works whatever the light is like. I jiggled the camera up and down as I took this photo. ICM can give a dream like feeling to a picture, and I LOVE dream like feelings. One of my friends at the camera club manages to do this in some of her landscape photos – really lovely. The effect is almost like an Impressionist painting, another style that I enjoy. It doesn’t claim to be a record of what I saw – this is a more artistic view of what I saw.  Photography is as much about art as it is about records – my holiday snaps are mostly there to remind me of the good time that my wife and I had on our break.

You should try it – there is no guarantee that what you create will be satisfying, but you will definitely have fun trying!