When most people pick up a camera they are taught to hold it steady, to capture the scene as crisply and clearly as possible. It’s what we think of as good technique: sharp focus. But what if moving the camera deliberately could unlock a different kind of storytelling? This is where Intentional Camera Movement (ICM) comes in. It’s a technique that allows one to see not just what a place looks like, but what it feels like. For anyone new to photography or for those curious about how to move beyond the literal, ICM offers a different, more expressive way to communicate. It is one of my favorite methods.
What is Intentional Camera Movement?
At its core ICM is just what it sounds like, moving the camera deliberately using a slower shutter speed. The movement, whether it’s a panning motion or a slight swirl of the camera, is captured in the image; creating a painterly—abstract effect. Think of it as painting with light and motion. It requires slowing the shutter speed and embracing the blur, streaks, and softness created. ICM can even be done using a phone camera.
Why Use ICM?
One of the best reasons to use ICM is that it allows for emotional and sensory storytelling. When you look at a traditional landscape photo of say a stand of trees around a lake, you might like the scene, the quality of light might be perfect, the detail and colors, but it’s often an incomplete picture. ICM, on the other hand, can bring the viewer into the emotional experience of the scene.
Imagine standing on a beach in Martha’s Vineyard, watching a sunset. I watched as the light shifted and decreased quickly, changing the scene dramatically. A strong breeze contributed to the movement and feel of the scene. The air felt alive. A sharply focused image could show the decreasing light and the waves, but it likely wouldn’t capture the feeling of witnessing the sunset as much.
The image above, with streaks of blue and white, and orange might look abstract, but it can communicate something deeper too; the sight and movement of the sea and sky; the breeze, and maybe a sense of the experience of actually being there.
ICM encourages experimentation and freedom. It frees you from the pressure of technical perfection and invites creativity and play. There’s joy in discovering how a slight twist of your wrist, or angling of the camera, or a slow sway of your arms creates something entirely different. The results are often unpredictable, which is fun and a relief in an art so often dominated by exactness.
How ICM Conveys the Sensory Experience of Place
What makes ICM so effective in communicating the sensory atmosphere of a place is its ability to mimic the way we feel a place, rather than how we see it. Our lived experience of a landscape is rarely static. We’re in motion—walking, breathing, turning our heads. Light changes by the second. Sounds come and go. Emotion filters everything.
Through blur and abstraction, ICM reflects the fluidity of life. In the image above, it captured the changing light and the flow of the ocean. It can evoke the quiet awe of standing before the ocean at dusk. By removing the visual anchors of clarity and detail, ICM opens up space for emotion, memory, and mood.
It allows a person with a camera, to make images that are not just about what a place looks like, but what it means to us personally. It becomes less about documentation and more about interpretation.
At its heart, Intentional Camera Movement is a way of going beyond the surface of the visual world into something more poetic. For photographers used to chasing sharpness and accuracy, it can feel radical or even wrong, but sometimes, in letting go of control, we find the truest way to say, “this is what it was like to be there”.
And in the end that is what most people aspire to convey with their photography.