Sumi-e Photography in Tasmania

Years ago, when I was illustrating a book on Shinto, the Japanese religion, I came up with a photographic style I called Sumi-e after the black ink, gestural art painting technique. This was long before Photoshop, and I used a purely in-camera technique. I selected a slow shutter speed and waved my camera in brush-like strokes in front of rocks, trees, and other objects in nature. (Click here to see my early work).

Walking through the rain forest at Mt. Field National Park today, I revived my old technique and found it quite satisfying. Waving my camera and lens in front of trees and ferns and waterfalls in this stupendously beautiful park made me feel like a orchestra conductor conducting a grand symphony. Here are a couple of the results. The first shot was taken by quickly twisting my Nikon D3 with a 14-24mm zoom lens at a shutter speed of 1/1oth of a second. The second shot was done with a 70-200mm lens at 1/2 second by changing the zoom with the shutter open. They were both minimally processed using LR 2.0 beta.