I am simply stunned by William Neil’s “Impressions of Light” portfolio, a series of beautifully impressionistic images that Neil creates by moving the camera during a long exposure.   (Outdoor Photographer article here.)  You owe it to yourself to take a look.  (If you don’t have time to browse the whole collection, here’s a favorite example from Neil’s Photo Blog.)  The textures, colors, and sense of space in these images are fantastic.

I am sufficiently impressed by the Impressions of Light to try my own hand at images in that style, though hopefully different enough from Neil’s to move beyond mere imitation.  Here are a couple of my initial efforts, all shot from my office window.  (Here we come to an important difference between Neil and me.  He spends his days photographing in Yosemite.  I spend mine in a skyscraper looking out the window.  Go figure.)

This is a motion blur of an interesting banded cloud formation. The light turquoise color of the sky was striking, and I tried to make it the focal point of the image:

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The Blue Stripe

Here is a blur of lower downtown Denver. I tried to leave just enough detail for the viewer to understand that this is an image of an urban landscape, though the image is primarily about texture and color.

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Lower Down Town #3

You can see more of my initial attempts at “urban blur” images here.