I’ve been looking at the dreamlike photography and images from our last night in Thailand. It was wonderful, vibrant and yet blurry. The kids and I were sitting on a bamboo mat watching the sunset together. Any minute Brian was going to return from his last scuba dive. I slowed my shutter speed down and took a shot of the kids so they wouldn’t be sharp. We were all in the midst of this in-between time. We all knew we were leaving the next day. And even though we were still sitting on a beach in Southern Thailand, our bodies, minds and spirits were starting to make the transition of going home. Everything felt blurry in my head. It only made sense to capture images that were not sharp in focus but instead captured the mood of our last night.

Pascaline was filling up a Frisbee with wet sand then chasing Blaze with it. This image has not been processed. It is straight out of the camera. Can you believe that? I love the color saturation, the green waters, the blurred waves, the long tail boats in stretched motion, and Ms. Mischievous Pascaline with her Frisbee.

When I caught this image of her, I was inspired to do something different for Brian. I wanted to get some shots of him returning. We had thought he’d be back by sunset, but when sunset had come and gone I had to rethink my lighting situation. My initial desire was to capture Brian getting off the boat after his last scuba dive, or capture him coming out of the water. After I took this image of Pascaline with the Frisbee, I decided I wanted to capture a dream-like and somewhat magical image of Brian. I wanted him to be able to look back on this image and always know that there was a place he had found, where days and nights moved with fluidity–where the exotic was real and alive.

Since the sun was long gone, I decided to push the limits of the Image Stabilizer feature in my Sony A900. Have you heard about this cool feature with the Sony cameras? Instead of spending tons of money on Image Stabilizer (IS) lenses, Sony put the IS inside the camera body. It’s truly brilliant.

I bumped my ISO to 800, set my Aperture/F stop to a 5.6. Why a 5.6? We often shoot everything at lower Fstops, 2.8 and lower. But see the blue clouds? I didn’t want to take away the definition of their form and shape. A 5.6 Aperture/Fstop would help capture this detail better than a 2.8. And then I slowed my Shutter Speed ALL the way down to 1.3 seconds. I hand held the camera for 1.3 seconds! That’s a long time to hold your camera and hope for some clarity if not any.

I wanted to capture Brian and the long tail boats in motion, so I didn’t need the image to be real sharp. The blur was going to help tell the story. But too much blur would lose the story.

I pushed the Image Stabilizer feature to see if I could still capture the magic in the motion of Brian returning from his last dive. This is one of my favorite shots of Brian, hands down. Why? Because the story of this image is so powerful to our family.

Brian happened to be the last guy off the long tail boat. The long tail boat driver to the left of him had turned on his lantern for the night. And here Brian was, coming home, struggling to say goodbye as we all were to this amazing place. The image result couldn’t have been closer to the story I wanted for Brian.

I didn’t do one single thing of post process to this image. This image is straight out of the Sony A900. Isn’t that amazing! The vibrant color is not processed, it’s what the camera captured. And that’s exactly how it looked to my naked eye.

All these images give me a sense of dreamlike imagery. Don’t you think? Especially the last one of Brian coming home. I look at that image and feel like I’ve dreamed it.

Have you experienced capturing dreamlike photography before? If not, I encourage you to give it a try. But first, you have to tell the Focused-Sharp Critic in our brain to take a coffee break. Dreamlike photography doesn’t have to be sharp. In fact, the blurred motion can be a stronger message than clarity.

Want an exercise for Dreamlike Photography?

1. Before you decide what day your going to try this exercise, start thinking about what story you’d like to tell. Whose story would you like to tell? What’s the focus of the story? What makes it a dreamlike story?

2. Fifteen to Twenty minutes after sunset, set your camera to a higher ISO of 800 (or higher depending on your camera–the nicer cameras that cost a little more tend to give you better images at higher ISO’s then the cheaper cameras. So play around with what you have.)

3. Have your kids, pets, a friend be your subject.

4. Decide if your subject is going to be in motion or your subject’s surroundings. For the image of Pascaline with the Frisbee, her surroundings of long tail boats coming and going were in much more motion than her.

5. Set your aperture to a 5.6 or little higher, maybe 8.0. This will give you detail in the background. But if you don’t want any detail of your background, set your aperture to a lower setting of 2.8.

6. To top off the blur in the background, slow your shutter speed way down. If you have an IS lens, use it for this. If you have a Sony Camera, even better b/c the IS is in the camera body. If you don’t have either, time to pull out the tripod.

7. Bracket your Shutter Speeds. Take a photo of your moving subject with a Shutter Speed of 1 second. Look at what you got. Is it to blurry, to dark, to bright? Make your adjustments as needed until you like what you’ve got.

8. Have fun and let things blur. Capture the story on this exercise, not the detail.

9. Share what you get on my Facebook page! I always love to see your results!

Travel with us for one of our workshops and create your own dreamlike photography!