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How To Experiment With Digital Photography:
Hands-On Techniques

NOTE: For an overview of scientific experimental methods for artists, see my academic article at the Digital Humanities website, HASTAC: Introduction To Scientific Experimental Methods For Artists: How science and art can intersect

WHY EXPERIMENT WITH DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY?
From the moment I bought my first crude digital camera in 1998, I knew that the LCD monitor made the digital camera a different kind of beast. The instant feedback allowed me to zero in on effects in real time. While experimenting was possible with film, it was impractical as it was time consuming, expensive plus the long time lag between taking a photo and seeing the results made learning especially difficult. Digital solved all these problems and made it the perfect photographic medium for experimenting.

EXAMPLE OF EXPERIMENTING
After about a year of experimenting, I wanted to experiment with panning -- this effect is often used in a limited way in still photography, e.g., a football player running against the blurred background of the stands. But I wanted to use much slower shutter speeds than had been used in the past.

From My Book Experimental Digital Photography: How To Pan
To pan successfully you will need to move the camera so that it tracks the subject in synchronized motion. This means that the camera is locked into the movement of the subject – and in a perfect pan – the two movements, camera and subject, are in unison. Typically the subject is a moving car or a person walking or running. And even though you may be tracking the subject correctly (absolute movement) there will still be internal movement (relative movement) such as hands swinging back and forth which will not be in-sync with your panning. NOTE: The terms relative and absolute movement were defined 100 years ago by the Italian Futurist painters.

EXPERIMENTING STEPS

Step #1: Define the key variables
I knew that the principle variables were subject movement, camera movement and a combination of the two. My mentor, Ross Scroggs at the UNC-CH photo lab where I worked as a graduate student in the 1970s, taught me about this when it came to effects of blur and motion in a photograph.

Step #2: Control other variables not part of the experiment
Initially I wanted even lighting with the same kind of lamp (color temperature) so that light would be a constant factor in my photographs. Plus I wanted to work at night so that changing daylight would not be a factor.
I also needed to shoot moving subjects that were at roughly the same distance. And ideally I needed to find subjects that moved at about the same speed, so that the variable of subject speed would be constant for my initial tests.

Step #3: Having understood the variables, try a number of different approaches
I wanted to shoot at a number of different shutter speeds and in addition a number of different angles. But to keep my experiment clear, I decided to shoot at several different shutter speeds at one angle, then change angles and again shoot at several different shutter speeds
NOTE: With the EXIF date embedded in photographic imagery it is now relatively easy to go back and look at the camera settings that produced the photo -- more about this in a future article.

Step #4: Expect the unexpected
As scientists know, the unexpected often happens. This is part of the fun and the excitement of experimenting. This also means that you have to be open to accident and results that differ from what you thought you might get.

MY LABORATORY

Having laid out the principle elements of my experiment, I looked for a setting that would meet my criteria. And I found the ideal laboratory close to where I lived. It was a go-kart track that was open until eleven o'clock at night.

The go-kart track was perfect because it was:
== well lit at night with the same kind of even light (with the same color temperature) around the track, thus controlling the variable of lighting
== the go-karts traveled at about the same speed
== the track allowed a number of different angles
== because it was a recreational area, no one minded that I took
pictures for several hours every Saturday for most of the summer

It took me quite a while to find the right shutter speed and angle, but eventually I discovered a vantage point on a bridge that crossed the track. This allowed me to shoot down on the go-karts at about the same distance. As a result I could set the lens to one zoom setting (focal length) and focus at one intermediate point with enough depth of field to cover a change in position. This solved the problem of constantly changing the zoom and focus which had occurred at other positions on the track when the go-karts were at variable distances.

In the process I also learned much more about the technique of panning. I learned that I had to follow a go-kart long before I pushed the shutter button so that I could establish a consistent movement of the camera in sync with the vehicle. Also I found that like a tennis or golf swing, I had to follow through after the shot was taken which resulted in much smoother pictures.

MOVING ON AND ALLOWING MORE VARIABLES

Once I had mastered the go-kart pictures, I moved on to shots that were more spontaneous but with more variables and less control. I decided to take photos of cars driving down the main street of a town close to where I lived.
This was a good choice because:
== the light was acceptable with the same kind of street lamps at regular intervals along the route
== the speed limit for cars at this point was twenty miles an hour, so I knew what to expect when cars drove through
== there was a park just off the main street that gave me a good angle for shooting

ITALIAN FUTURISM AND MY SLOW SHUTTER SPEED SHOTS OF CARS IN MOTION

From the beginning of my experiments, I had clear images from the Italian Futurist movement in mind. The new sense of motion and speed that took over the world around 1910 was a central to this modern art movement. So from the start I was looking at ways to capture pictures similar to their paintings -- but with a camera. Of course, I did not know if this was possible. Nevertheless, I think it was quite helpful to have several of their paintings in mind as I conducted my experiments -- partly for inspiration and partly as a guide to help me through the forest of choices that I needed to make.

I kept shooting and shooting, taking thousands of shots. Then to my surprise I got what I was after. It turned out that the chrome on a car could stand out and be clearly registered in a photograph even in dim light. This chrome gave the effect of line and these lines distorted and produced a photograph very much like a Futurist painting -- an effect that was completely unexpected.

NOTE:See a list of my other articles here at PIXIQ. www.pixiq.com/contributors/rick-doble

For more about my approach to photography see my book: Experimental Digital Photography.

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