Beautiful Examples of Kinetic Photography
When you hear the word ‘kinetic‘ for the first time, probably the first thing that comes to your mind is motion. Kinetic Photography, also known as ‘camera tossing‘, is a technique of shooting photos with the actual physical movement of the camera. However, it does not necessarily involve tossing of the camera — you can also shake, bounce, swing or spin it; the goal of the technique is to obtain unpredictable results which are sometimes fascinating, always abstract and rarely boring.
The main rule of kinetic photography is simple: do not hold your camera stationary! Obviously, it is a quite uncommon and bizarre technique that involves risk of damaging your camera. The concept is extremely simple and really fun to use. Though the outcome is uncertain, kinetic photography sometimes produces beautiful abstract, random and motion blurred images. The results often look like a computer generated graphics.
Below we present beautiful examples of kinetic photography for your inspiration. All images are linked to photographer’s web sites. You can explore further works of the photographers we’ve featured below by clicking on the images presented in this showcase. And feel free to add links to some beautiful works in the comments to this post!
Beautiful Examples of Kinetic Photography
Further Resources
- Camera Toss Flickr Group
- Camera Toss – The Blog
A showcase photo-blog for the “best of” camera tossing and general musings on this form of kinetic photography. Created and maintained by Ryan Gallagher. - C
Brian Klepper
September 25th, 2009 7:34 amBeautiful work! Thanks for the collection.
Rav3style
September 25th, 2009 7:41 amBeautiful but I think some things like the smoke photography do not constitute kinetic photography (or maybe I just misunderstood the term)
Rob Eardley
September 25th, 2009 7:41 amI had a go at this with my old camera. Some of the effects you can get are really amazing as this post shows.
Smitha
September 25th, 2009 7:53 amTruly beautiful & inspiring :)
Tom Bradshaw
September 25th, 2009 8:08 amAmazing stuff!
gregory
September 25th, 2009 8:11 amhow ’bout some examples of the techniques that the photographer used to produce these images? e.g. how to shake the camera to produce good results.
Web Design News
September 25th, 2009 8:44 amInspiring..
@webdesign_news
e11world
September 25th, 2009 8:50 amYeah I agree with gregory. Some examples of the techniques that the photographer used to produce these images would be nice.
Anrkist
September 25th, 2009 9:59 amIf you click the links, some of them lead to explanations.
Dragos
September 25th, 2009 10:03 amNice photos! I played with my camera too, making photos at my Apple keyboard light. here’s the result.
John
September 25th, 2009 10:19 amI did this a while back and had no idea what it was called.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/john-hanusek/sets/72057594071495425/
j
September 25th, 2009 10:21 amWOWY
mp
September 25th, 2009 11:07 amDoesn’t really seem to be a collection of “camera tossing”. The images here seem to be the result of some pretty planned (and probably stationary) shots.
Yet another uninspiring (and not too well thought out) photo collection from smashing.
mtnrockdhh
September 25th, 2009 11:18 amThanks for highlighting Kinetic Photography technique.
However, a little clarification is in order. You incorrectly identify in your introductory paragraph that Kinetic Photography is also known as Camera Toss, and that it doesn’t necessarily involve tossing of the camera.
Kinetic Photography involves movement of the camera (and/or the subject), which can be accomplished my hand-held motion, swinging from a strap or tether, rotation on a tripod, etc.
Camera Toss is a specific subset of Kinetic Photography that involves creation of photographs by an airborne camera – one that is thrown into the air, out of one’s hands and untethered in any way. So, to qualify as a Camera Toss image, the camera DOES in fact need to be thrown into the air. Various types of rotation contribute to the reproducible geometries exhibited by many of the images referenced above that resulted from actual tossed cameras, and these geometries are usually easily differentiated from their hand-held counterparts by the fluidity of the resulting patterns.
kevinsturf
September 25th, 2009 1:38 pmwow those look amazing, great post
Michael Tuck
September 25th, 2009 7:16 pmStunning!
Sten Hougaard
September 25th, 2009 11:26 pmI have also always been facinated by pushing the limit when taking photoes. In the old days with SLRs it was an expensive joy – making the will to experience close to non-existing (because of the cost). Today with instance results and no-costs using digital cameraes it is very easy and cheap to experience when talking pictures! :-)
I though do not have any examples as good as the ones above – but I would like to share one: a simple kinetic photo. About the image I can say that I tried to set exposure to 15 seconds one night and turned around during the 15 seconds.
For a period I used the resulting image as a backdroup on my monitor :-)
Cheers!
Thomas
September 26th, 2009 12:35 amGreat article but …
You have forgotten Heinrich Heidersberger. Take a look at the results of his so called Rhythmograph.
Heinrich Heidersberger
bs.kishore
September 26th, 2009 6:26 amstunning ! I would love to know the techniques involved….
bauhaus
September 26th, 2009 6:58 amCant bring myself to toss my D3 around I¬m afraid /o\
James Bryant
September 26th, 2009 9:08 amWow….These are incredible. Does anyone know what type of camera is required for Kinetic Photography? SLR? Also, do you know of any good tuturials for this type of photography?
velcgartist
September 26th, 2009 9:31 amIts really a great works
DaMan
September 26th, 2009 12:42 pmA how to would be nice
Mateo
September 26th, 2009 12:45 pmthose look amazing
Tadas
September 26th, 2009 1:01 pmVery great post. Thank you, really inspiring!
KC
September 26th, 2009 2:52 pmIt’s hard to believe these are real photos with no retouching, but then again, I’m just a amateur. Am I missing something?
Alejandro
September 26th, 2009 3:20 pmque hermosas imagenes :)
Ciesiel
September 26th, 2009 3:25 pm@john & @sten – to be fair… yours are just blurry photos… Sorry guys. Nice result with an Apple keyboard though. Altogether, nice post SM, great examples – more photography please!
Peace!
Liz
September 26th, 2009 4:16 pmAwesome article. It inspired me to try it out by throwing my camera phone in the air a bunch of times. I got some interesting results considering I was doing this for only about 20 mins with a 3 megapixel phone camera.
http://twitpic.com/ja7n8
http://twitpic.com/ja7uk
I’d like to try doing it seriously some time… seems fun!
harry
September 26th, 2009 5:30 pmSUPERB! I love 3rd one!
Dusan Vlahovic
September 26th, 2009 7:11 pmAmazing photos, moving a little can have amazing results!
Pete
September 28th, 2009 12:59 am@James
You don’t necessarily need an SLR. You can use any camera that lets you set the exposure time. The light source is recorded onto the cameras sensor while the shutter is open, the longer you leave it open, the better the effect. If you’re using a point and shoot, it would be worth dropping the exposure down if you can, if not then make sure you’re in a dark room and set your ISO to 100 (or as low as it’ll go) this will make your camera less sensitive to light so you don’t blow out your image. Computer monitors with patterns on the screen work best when camera tossing, point your camera at the computer, press the shutter and gently throw it upwards into the air
Paul Olyslager
September 28th, 2009 3:45 amLooks really nice. I think kinetic photography looks even nicer with a lomographic effect… done with a photoshop action or with the real deal camera of course.
thinking-fish
September 28th, 2009 6:04 amHey – wow – someone featured my image!!! it’s the 3rd one down by ‘thinking fish’. I can see that some people have wanted to know how the shots are taken, so, If anyone’s interested, i can explain mine if you have 2 mins.
Firstly, keep your eye out for something interesting. Most people shoot small light sources (smoke, swinging light sources etc.) I like to find BIG structures.
There’s a building in Beijing that has LED lights that run around the outside. I put my camera (Canon EOS 5D MarkII with a 24-105 zoom) on a tripod, punched in 2 second exposure, f4.0, ISO 100. Here’s the slightly tricky part… I manually zoomed in during the 2 seconds trying to be as smooth as possible. You get different results zooming in or out – see which you prefer.
You don’t need a nice camera, just keep trying and experimenting. for every 30 shots you’ll get something interesting. Take a hundred and you’ll get something beautiful.
Incidentally… when i was taking this shot a ‘women of ill repute’ kept hassling me for a ‘massage’.
TF
Pete
September 28th, 2009 8:14 am@thinking-fish
It’s a stunning image mate, very ‘Tron’.
Nando Rossi
September 28th, 2009 1:49 pmGreat article.
My good friend Felipe Cretella has been doing this for a few years and has some pretty interesting stuff now.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/felipecretella/
rupam
September 29th, 2009 6:21 amCoool…
Tomas Hallenberg
September 29th, 2009 7:40 amI did one of those a while back, not as abstract though: See it on Flickr
sia
September 30th, 2009 4:07 amI did some kinetic pictures a few years ago… http://www.flickr.com/photos/sia-pictures/sets/72157616962722353/
phantom3030
October 1st, 2009 9:49 amtruly useless and underwhelming
Manish Khatri
October 1st, 2009 11:32 am;-o !! Nostalgic.. Extremely superb collection…
Thnks for sharing..guys. :)
Drew
October 1st, 2009 1:04 pmAmazing.. gonna go try to create my own this weekend. :)
Bill Stickers
October 2nd, 2009 4:05 amhere’s a good one
http://blacksmithpro.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/an-evening-at-the-ica-cinema/
Jourdan
October 2nd, 2009 6:33 amWOW! What a great collection.
pnamajck
October 5th, 2009 12:50 pmawesome work, guys . . . lettin’ the inspiration take hold. the blue / creme work by matt gorecki reminds me of up ‘n coming “google wave” logo. well done . . . and thanks for sharing.
Foxter
October 8th, 2009 11:24 amThanks! This is a great images to make something… an avatars for example… Isn’t it?
polaroid-fan
October 13th, 2009 2:25 amexcellent collection, great work !!!
here some other exciting samples:
http://photoworx.ch/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,75/lang,de/
soundwaves
December 1st, 2009 5:15 pmWow, impressive photographs! I’ve been experimenting with Kinetic Photography, and I didn’t even know it.
Once again, thank you Smashing Magazine.
Kyle
January 14th, 2010 12:53 pmWell, they used one of the photos that I wasn’t the most impressed with of the ones I’ve taken (14th down), nonetheless, I’m quite flattered.
All the same, in my case, for a How-To:
1) Find a (hopefully) colorful light source at night,
2) set the shutter speed to something like 2 seconds,
3)set the timer,
4) just as the timer is about to go off, toss the camera into the air, aiming at the light source, in any sort of motion (spiral, twist, etc.)
5) ???
6) Profit!
Grace
August 30th, 2010 6:14 pmI liked the how-to you gave it was short and funny. But pretty accurate I shall give canera tossing photography a try in the future. Thanks!
afzal
November 20th, 2011 10:26 pmhow can i do same photo work by photoshop – 7