© Karen McRae, 2018
long exposure photography
Earth. Autumn. Moving Forward.
Landscape with movement converted to (toned) black and white.
© Karen McRae, 2018
Losing the Light
End of day landscape – dusky skies and a whisper of tree.
© Karen McRae, 2018
Momento (after the storm)
If you look closely you might notice the masts of docked sailboats emerging from the blustery landscape. The pinging and whistling sounds on vibrating metal masts are glorious.
© Karen McRae, 2018
Sumac & Shoreline
Low light & long exposure.
© Karen McRae, 2018
Sketching the Landscape ~ A Summer Evening
Walking with a camera and etching trees into the velvet evening sky. The colours shift at the pace of each footfall and flush at every street light.
© Karen McRae, 2016
Winter Nights
They have only just begun, really. It was a few days ago that the snow finally decided to swing by and tuck in the plants and trees with a thick white blanket. I confess that I love it. What is more peaceful than a shrouded winter night? The snowflakes, relinquished from clouds, slipping by in whispers. Fresh snow for a fresh year.
Best wishes for this shiny new year
[Images made by using a pop of flash at the beginning of a long exposure and then a little camera movement during the exposure.]
© Karen McRae, 2016
Flight Patterns
Night Light
Sometimes when I feel like my work or ideas are getting monotonous I try to think of my camera as a sort of sketchbook and think of ways I might capture ‘sketches’ of the landscape rather than more ‘representative’ photographs. I’ll try using double exposures, long exposures and/or maybe camera movement to get a different sort of feel happening.
These are a few images from a snowy winter evening when I went out to just play. No expectations or specific ideas – in my mind I was simply sketching the night and following my intuition as I experimented. I made setting adjustments as the camera gave me feedback. At times I used flash to capture the snowflakes and elements in the foreground along with exposures lasting several seconds, and at times also moving the camera to see what might happen.
In the first image you can see that I was moving my camera up and down which created light trails from a light source on the other side of the woods. A strange image but there is something about it that I find oddly appealing. Perhaps it reinforces the idea that a camera is a tool with endless possibilities and every so often I need to be reminded of this.
I wasn’t initially planning on posting these as they seemed to be more about process than result – technically they are quite noisy – but I sort of like the soft-focused, grainy look of them and in the end they really are sketches of a snowy winter night.
© Karen McRae, 2014