Impressions of a Place

by Jim Zuckerman

I just returned from conducting a photo tour to India, and one of the techniques I shared with the eight people on my trip was how to create an impression of a place, rather than interpreting it literally. With the immediacy of digital technology, I showed them that slow shutter speeds used from moving vehicles at night can result in abstractions that are quite pleasing. Depending on the speed of the vehicular movement, the lens choice, and the light available, the shutter speed is chosen for its ability to artistically render a scene as an impression instead of a sharply defined image. The bicycle rickshaw in Varanasi was taken at 1/4 second from a slowly moving vehicle at night. I’ve enhanced the color with hue/saturation in Photoshop so the colors of the lights are much richer than in the original capture.

I did the same thing in the daytime in the Calcutta flower market and when my group and I took a short rickshaw ride into an area of the city where cars couldn’t park. The bright ambient light required a small lens aperture and a low ISO, but this enabled me to use 1/6th and 1/8th seconds, respectively, to achieve the effect I wanted. Not all blurs work out. It often takes several attempts to get one that looks good, but it’s fun trying.