Jim Swift
Jim has long been interested in photography, using his first paycheck in 1958 to buy a Leica III. He's done medium-format photography, and went digital in 2002, about the same time he started writing haiku. He enjoys abstract and nature photography and images that look at familiar surroundings differently, and finds that his digital images are a natural fit with haiku, senryu and tanka poetry . He also has a strong interest in black and white photography, an interest that he pursues as the editor of the Photographic Arts page at Moonset.
Recently, Jim took an online course in portfolio development with William Neill (http://www.williamneill.com). The final assignment was to assemble a presentation of the images he'd been working on. The result was a multimedia slideshow of his 'Sense of Forest' series of photos inspired by the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. The influence of this class was not so much on his style or the way he shoots, but it confirmed two ideas that he had been developing for some time.
The first idea was that of working with projects—assembling a body of work of consistent quality that explores a subject in depth. This is a hallmark of the work of the most experienced photographers Jim admires, and so he himself now has a few projects underway: the West Coast Forests, Abstracts, and Impression Photography using camera motion. The second idea was that there is a place for photographic haiga among serious, exhibition quality photography. He knew this from having exhibited his own photographic haiga alongside conventional exhibition photography in Port Alberni, and has had discussions with other photographic haijin—Ron Moss, Michael Rehling, soji and others. Still, he was uncertain how this idea would be received by Bill Neill, who exhibits at the Ansel Adams gallery in Yosemite. It was gratifying when Neill not only liked the haiga but also encouraged Jim to include them in the Forest portfolio.
In this feature, we're pleased to showcase Jim's collected haiga employing abstract photographic images generated through camera motion. One of them, 'forest air', placed first in our February 'camera toss' kukai at WHChaikumultimedia; the reception has been equally enthusiastic at HaikuHut and AHApoetry forums.
icy wind
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The 'Sense of Forest' Series
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winter stillness |
 cathedral grove |
 forest air |
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Jim's approach to creating the images and poeming them into haiga may be gleaned from things he's said when posting them to the online workshop groups. 'Cathedral grove', for instance, was accomplished with a setting of 1/2 and a wrist rotation that pointed the camera lens up and down. 'Light dancer' was serendipitous. While checking a new wireless remote for use with bulb exposures, he had a single light on in the room. The camera, set to a 2 - 3 second exposure time, was moving around. 'I was facing a mirror so the light was further away than normal', he explained. 'I happened to look at the shots on the card after the wireless remote tests and saw the possibilities. So I just adjusted the aperture to get a decent colour and started to play. . .'
‘Night time’ was similarly almost accidental. A change of hue on a shot of a cedar branch in an old growth forest near Port Alberni triggered memories of walking past Preservation Hall in New Orleans one evening. What's so fascinating about the camera motion haiga is that they have the coloristic richness of photography, but with visual representation replaced by abstract rhythms of line and texture, the impulse has been to link image and text synesthetically, not simply on perceived visual resemblance but on the level of mood. The haiku are evocative rather than descriptive, reaching into multisensory sound, silence, motion for their imagery, emotion and memory for mood. Following the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, Jim reports, 'night time' has become a multi-layered haiga for many viewers.
References and Sources:
The camera motion are displayed in Jim's online albums at BetterPhoto.com (www.betterphoto.com/gallery/dynoGall2.asp?catID=32282), redbubble (www.redbubble.com/people/jimswift) and JALbum (jswift.jalbum.net/Galleries).
The four Forest haiga may be viewed in an online album 'Impressions from an Old Growth Forest' at the JALbum site; three of these haiga have been incorporated into a multimedia slideshow titled 'The West Coast Forest'. It is available online in two versions: The better of the two requires the Photodex Presenter, a plug-in that can easily be downloaded. Unfortunately, it is available only for Windows. For Mac and other users, there is a Flash version that is slower in loading and not as high in quality (jhsw.ca/westcoastforest.html or jhsw.ca/westcoastforestfl.html ).
Until last year Jim instructed a photography and Photoshop class at his local community college until last year. Meanwhile, we at WHChaikumultimedia often ask him about digital post-processing. At Moonset, where he is editor of photographic haiga, an'ya told him that several haijin had said that they would like to get into photographic haiga but the complexities of digital camera were beyond them. That is not surprising, Jim says. In a recent survery in Britain, the digital camera topped the list of intimidating new technologies. While good photography has always had a strong techncial component, with film, most of this was hidden from users in the complexities of the printing and developing labs.
Ever the teacher, Jim realized a need in the haiga community for a central resource for photo haiga and created Photo Haiga Help with articles, links, and a question/answer section (jhsw.ca/photohaigahelp). To date the website has had over 300 visits from people 16 different countries. The page explaining exposure modes will be useful to anyone who wants to try camera tossing and motion techiques.
'Camera Tossing'
As the name implies, a camera toss is an abstract photographic image created by setting your camera to long exposure (1/2 to 2 seconds) and tossing it in the air with a calculated spin. If you're reluctant to put hundreds of dollars of precious camera equipment at risk, swing the camera on its strap, or, perhaps, simply look before you delete those blurry first shots that we have on every roll. If you'd like to know more, google. There's even a blog where you'll find examples and how-to information (cameratoss.blogspot.com,).
