Between Moments & Intentional Camera Movement with Scott Strazzante
Courtesy of Scott Strazzante
Time morphs everything. In photography, when slowing the shutter speed, we can see a transformation within a period of time. The photograph gains fluidity and energy of change. With a slowed speed, there is also an opportunity for additional action by the photographer. This action can be unplanned or deliberate. When the motion is purposeful, it can be defined as intentional camera movement, which removes the details accompanying a tack-sharp photo. The slowing of the shutter and intentional camera movements completely morph the scene so that colors, shapes, and a flurry of lines fill the frame.
Over the winter, I found myself testing the intentional camera movement method. My early experimentation might have been due to a lull in my everyday work. But it encouraged me to keep my eyes open and see. To reevaluate my photography and how I was pushing my creativity.
In the book “Art & Fear,” authors David Bayles and Ted Orland highlight the importance of maneuvering within creativity and art: “You have to find your work all over again all the time, and to do that, you have to give yourself maneuvering room on many fronts — mental, physical, temporal.” Through the creative process, a willingness to walk outside the confines of one set path is crucial. Allowing for fluidity lets the act and not the outcome shape the process.
Ernst Haas, the noted Austro-American photographer, utilized a slower shutter speed to highlight motion. He aimed to highlight the visual melody that comes with time being captured on a long exposure.
Haas expanded on this choice:
“To express dynamic motion through a static moment became for me limited and unsatisfactory. The basic idea was to liberate myself from this old concept and arrive at an image in which the spectator could feel the beauty of a fourth dimension, which lies much more between moments than within a moment. In music one remembers never one tone, but a melody, a theme, a movement. In dance, never a moment, but again the beauty of a movement in time and space.”
The beauty of a movement in time and space. This is the core of what hooked me when I started creating images with intentional camera movement. Soon I found myself searching for others who were also making pictures with the technique.
Courtesy of Scott Strazzante
One photographer whose work I’ve long admired is Scott Strazzante, a photojournalist at the San Francisco Chronicle. Scott has pushed the boundaries in photography, and I was intrigued to see his images that demonstrated intentional camera movement circulate on social media. Scott was creating a series focused on utilizing intentional camera movement and slow shutter speeds when documenting California’s coastline. The result was a series of ethereal and dreamy images that reveal a feeling: the sun's warmth, the chaos of the waves, and the ocean's enormity.
Scott was gracious enough to tell me about his work and technique in great detail. Below you’ll find my Q&A with Scott, but before you read further, I suggest you look at his Pacific Series.
(Evan) You mentioned that it was a long path to creating impressionistic images, but I’m curious about what tipped you over the edge to pursue this project.
(Scott) I moved from Chicago to Northern California in 2014 to take a job as a staff photographer at the San Francisco Chronicle. At that point, besides settling into a new city and job, I was gaga about street photography. I dove in headfirst, making street images in one of the most visually interesting urban centers in the U.S. Many of the photos that I would make in SF would later appear in my book, Shooting from the Hip, which was published in late 2017.
Throughout my career, I have always seemed to have at least one personal project going on the side in addition to my duties as a photojournalist.
From 1994-2010 that photographic mistress was Common Ground, my long-term story on a piece of farmland in suburban Chicago that eventually transitioned to a high-density subdivision.
In 2010, I began my love affair with iPhone/Hipstamatic street photography, but by the end of the 2010s, I had started being less inspired by street photography.
In January 2019, my partner Kim and I decided to head up north from our home in Mill Valley for a weekend getaway at the coast. I decided to play around photographing the ocean on the trip. I thought it might be cool to do some long exposures of the surf with a 400mm lens on a tripod to isolate the water in the frame.
Within five minutes of photographing with that approach, I realized that I was making uninteresting images.
I then switched to intentionally moving the lens around while the shutter was open, and I loved the effect, and Pacific Series, my newest side project, was born.
(E) What inspiration were you drawing on?
(S) I was a business and art double major at Ripon College back in the 1980s, and, at the time, I did more watercolor painting than photography. Making photographs that look like paintings is a bit of an homage to my early days of studying impressionism masters. As for current-day influence, I would say I am trying to make images that resemble Todd Hido photos in a blender.
(E) How has delved deeper into this project shifted or added a new layer to your daily work at the Chronicle? Do you find yourself testing the method of intentional camera movement and a slow shutter speed while on assignment?
(S) Each time I go out and make a new set of Pacific Series images, I post my favorites across my social media accounts. Because of this, my editors at The SF Chronicle have seen the work. Early last year, pre-pandemic, a writer penned an essay on her solitary walks through Golden Gate Park. Deputy Director of Photography Russell Yip assigned me to spend a couple of weeks working on Pacific Series-style images in the park to accompany the essay. For this, I didn’t use a 400mm and a tripod, but instead a handheld 50mm lens.
Also, in 2021, I started doing a couple of Pacific Series-type images at each sporting event I cover. So far, that has only been the Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tourney and a Golden State Warriors game.
(E) You mentioned using a 400mm lens on a tripod for the series. Is this still the setup that you’re using for the Pacific Series?
(S) Yes, I have not strayed from this approach for the ocean photos, although I recently went on a trip to Hawaii and didn’t want to lug the 400 and a tripod, so I did a set there with a handheld 300mm lens
(E) Intentional camera movement is something I’m still learning more about, so I’m curious if the movements you’re doing when making the pictures seem random or if there’s an intention behind it. For example, you utilize a specific movement to achieve a particular feel in the images.
(S) At the start of each shoot, I have no plan. I just start moving the camera and lens around for a while, occasionally checking my camera screen to see how the photos are looking. If I come upon a successful movement, I will mimic it for 20-30 frames and then go back to randomness. Since I only shoot at sunset now, the exposures start out around a ¼ second at f/32, and by the time the sun sets, I am around 1-2 second exposures. For the longer exposures, I sometimes hold the frame steady for half the exposure and then move it around for the rest.
(E) In a previous email, you mentioned that the project is still evolving. The Pacific Series project started in 2019 with wave photography, and then in 2020, you added the human figure to the images. Are there any additions or plans for the project in 2021?
(S) At this point, I think I will continue to do a combination of total abstraction and human element images, but I am definitely more drawn to those with people in them at this point.
(E) Ernst Haas explained the slow shutter speed method and the thinking behind it: "To express dynamic motion through a static moment became for me limited and unsatisfactory. The basic idea was to liberate myself from this old concept and arrive at an image in which the spectator could feel the beauty of a fourth dimension, which lies much more between moments than within a moment. In music one remembers never one tone, but a melody, a theme, a movement. In dance, never a moment, but again the beauty of a movement in time and space.” Does this quote resonate with you and the work you’re creating in the Pacific Series?
(S) Absolutely! That is a wonderful quote. I actually didn’t realize that Haas played around with slow shutter speeds until I saw an image of his on Twitter that someone posted last month. However, I think his slow shutter speeds are not quite as slow as mine.
(E) When I look at the Pacific Series, I see a rhythm within each image and the series as a whole. I’m curious about your process for creating this body of work and whether it differs from your photojournalism work. And how are you working through the selection process and the thought behind the series?
(S) Throughout this series, I have been collecting my favorites and posting those on my website. As I do more, I have started replacing the weaker ones with stronger ones. On my first try back in January 2019, I originally liked 20-30 images. Only one of those has stuck around from that original shoot.
That approach is pretty much the same approach that I take with my PJ work.
(E) I've been a fan since I first saw Common Ground. You always seem to be pushing your creative visualization further and further. Do you have any advice for those pursuing photo projects that may differ slightly from the daily work one does?
(S) I do two types of photography- making images for others and making images for myself. My newspaper work is always filtered through what I think my editors, the writer, or the readers expect to see, while my personal work is unfiltered. I have tried over the years to unshackle myself from the expectations of others, but I haven’t quite got there yet. I think if I ever do accomplish that, then I won’t need to do personal projects.
Again, I thank Scott for taking the time to speak with me. Please give him a follow on his social accounts to see this project continue to take shape (Twitter & Instagram)!
Courtesy of Scott Strazzante
