I can remember sitting in a college photography class many moons ago when the instructor said you could not show motion in still photographs.  It was like laying down the gantlet.  I didn’t agree with him and set out to prove it.  To me it was the same thing as saying you could not show three dimension on a two dimensional surface.  While our photographs are not three dimensional they convey the notion or illusion of three dimension through the use of perspective, light and shadow, and the such.  In fact that is the failing of many new photographers.  They do not understand how important the use of light and shadow is for a successful image.  Good painters have understood this from the dawn of time.  Naturally they use light and dark pigments to create the same illusion that we photographers have to find or create before we push the shutter.  If the three dimensionality of photography is an illusion, why can we not portray motion through illusion.  When I photograph a helicopter or a piston aircraft with propellers I never use a shutter speed fast enough to stop the motion of the blades.  To do so would destroy the illusion of flight.  A blurring of the rotor blades is the icing on the cake that tells you the helicopter is in flight and will remain there.  When you pan a bicycler passing by, you can blur the background which tells your mind’s eye that he is in motion.  Those are some of the obvious ways to depict motion, but I wanted to experiment with something different.  Rather than slowing the shutter down so that the moving object could create the blur by traveling across the film (Chip) plane I wanted to create motion in a still object by moving the camera itself.  At least that was the intent at the beginning of my project.  I began photographing flowers on evening.  I deliberately swung the camera is crazy patterns as I tripped the shutter.  As I reviewed the images I saw something more than movement.  My movements were creating abstract images that took me into the world of art that I talk about so much.  I was beginning to see large canvas wraps of abstract art hanging on the walls of my home.  These images were beautiful.  Yes – you can show motion in a still photograph.  Like a photographic portrait on a two dimensional print is not the same as a three dimensional bronze sculptured portrait,  capturing motion in a still camera is not the same as capturing it in video (which in and of itself is an illusion of motion too.)  But a still camera image can suggest motion just as it can suggest three dimension.  There is one last point to make.  Experimenting in one direction can lead to another.  Had I not set out to prove my teacher wrong, I might not have found a path to the abstract images on this page.  I love the art of photography.  I love it when people see the work I do for the first time.  When their eyes light up as they see photography in a way they have never considered before.  That reminds me of another teacher who tried to tell me photography was not an art.  I set out to prove him wrong too, but that’s another story for another blog.