PHLOTOGRAPHY46tm … kinetic energy on a two dimensional plane.
My specific style enhances the perception of movement of objects–their FLOW, and depicts how a moving object OCCUPIES SPACE in a CONTINUUM.
The essential difference, is that I see differently than most people. I have the natural ability to stitch and HOLD images in my working memory, Area46, which was mapped by neurologists decades ago. I’ve always seen what I’m able to depict today. The challenge was to be able to leverage technology to record it.
Our eyes and brains play tricks on us constantly. My technique captures what physically occurs, as opposed to what we perceive to happen when an object like a car passes us on the street.
My PHLOTO46 images are shot in REAL TIME as the car drives by. The stretched images are created using a SINGLE shutter click of about two seconds.
These images have NOT been Photo-shopped other than to make minor adjustments to contrast, exposure, and focus. It is also NOT Ai software. The motion effects are created in-camera in real time. The tricked-out VW BUG above, actually drove by the Porsche 356 Roadster parked on the street as I took the shot. It was all I could do to grab the scene as it coasted by. Timing is everything.
I began experimenting with kinetic photography several years ago using 35mm gear that had a stitch feature for panoramas. I also experimented with phone cameras that had two lenses–one facing the subject, and the other the photographer. I worked with a tech engineer to hack the back lens so it could track my eye movement and identify the exact place on the frame I was looking. Our idea was to weight the camera to favour the areas where my eyes tracked. It worked, but it wasn’t fast enough, and in order to increase the speed we would have had to incorporate a bulky piece of hardware, which is counterproductive.
After a couple of years of only nominal results, I realized that I was getting very good at hacking my camera respective of HOW I moved it in its physical space. In a sense, it’s like playing a guitar or piano–you get better the more you practice. I’ve invested countless hours experimenting with and modifying the phloto46 technique, which has essentially, evolved to an operations hack.
I can now visualize a scene as a vehicle approaches, and within less than two seconds choose the elements I want to feature, i.e., a grill or wheel, etc., and place them in a creative KINETIC FLOW that I create in real time while the shutter is still open and cycling. In the early years I would shoot hundreds of images and only find maybe one worth the effort. Today, my shooting rate is close to 100%. The image might not be exactly what I envisioned, but it is close, or it turns out to be something truly amazing that wasn’t necessarily part of my initial plan.
It is ART after all, and there has to be some latitude built into the process to make it exciting, or why do it? The whole point for me is that PHLOTOGRAPHY46tm, as it relates to FLOW in REAL TIME and SPACE, delivers a new visceral experience.
It’s hard now to not look at moving objects as flow.
The residual energy of movement is not as fleeting as we often imagine.
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My Collections include; Motorcycles, Planes, Trains, Animals, People, et al.