Occasionally I like to look through the catalogue of images from our 2016 trip to Italy and Ireland. Of the thousands of pictures I brought back, I haven't worked on more than a few hundred. While I've discarded a lot of obvious duds and duplicates along the way - and could easily discard hundreds more - I'm now reluctant to do so. Occasionally I turn up a gem, like the slowly rocking gondolas near St Mark's, which went unnoticed for more than a year after we got back. It happened again a few months ago when I came across a blurry and somewhat painterly picture of a wet night in Venice.
I have only a vague recollection of taking the shot. I think I was returning to our hotel alone, Trish having deserted me in favour of an opera performance. The two men are approaching me from the direction of our hotel and looking at the result I was probably taken by the light, the outline of their umbrellas and the reflections in the wet flagstones. I doubt I had much time to think about camera settings, and the 1.6 second hand-held exposure was never going to be sharp. In the normal course of events I would probably have deleted the picture in camera as it lacked any of the crisp detail I normally like, but I didn't, and it now stands as one of my favourite pictures from the trip.
In any case, it got me thinking about deliberately introducing camera movement into some pictures and I've been playing around with the idea lately. I've tried photographing relatively static subjects while the world moves around them, keeping pace with my subject through a long exposure and even the old trick of zooming while the shutter is open. It's all good fun and makes a nice change from trying to keep everything pin sharp.
