We know the old chestnuts. To avoid camera shake use a tripod. To make a car in a photo look like it’s moving, swing to create a blur behind it. Or just add motion blur in Photoshop.
But blur is more than a mistake or a technique.
Because motion is an expression of time, Time is equally the subject. We actually look different in different windows of time. A person in a nanosecond window is hard-edged and distilled. A person in a two-second window is feathery and blended with the environment.
By opening up this window through a photograph, I learn to see myself as less rigid, more flowing and connected to our world. I begin to perceive the four-dimensional cloud we create. I see the literal mixing of our clouds with those around us, and the democracy of space that we inhabit fleetingly.
I sometimes see people as like a series of gopher tunnels or worm holes in wood, the twisting tube of where we’ve been. Through the Spirit Photo series I’m seeing a subtler, mistier and more mysterious vision of our tunnels through time.