You're kind of out of control of the end result because in ICM there is always an element of surprise. So you never know if you shake your camera this way or that way. You can never be sure what the end result is. Even if I do it again, second time, same subject. Hello and welcome to the SheClicks Women in Photography Podcast. I'm Angela Nicholson and I'm the founder of SheClicks, which is a community for female photographers. In these podcasts, I speak to women in the photographic industry to hear about their experiences, what drives them and how they got to where they are now. Today I'm joined by Kaiser Serin, a photographic artist from Finnish Lapland who uses intentional camera movement to explore mood and the changing seasons. Based in the Arctic Circle, she combines her own practice with teaching intentional camera movement or ICM and running an art gallery in her hometown. Hi, Kaisa, thank you for joining me on the podcast today. It's really lovely to have the opportunity to chat with you. Hi Angela and thank you so much for inviting me. This is really great. Great opportunity for me as well. Thank you. cool, you're very welcome, you're very welcome. Now you studied photojournalism, how do you think that background influences the way you approach your more expressive and abstract work today? Well, to do abstract and expressive photography it's really liberating. Because in photojournalism and in my earlier work I always have to document, I always have to show the real world. And now in the abstract photography there is no rules at all. No one's going to tell me that you have to do this, so you have to show that, you must not show that, and this is not true. I can do anything I want. And I think it's a really good balance, because I do still enjoy photojournalism and the job I do, but I really feel that I need... the creative part to counterbalance the two. So in a way, photojournalism doesn't have a direct influence on my creative work, but it reminds me how much fun the creative work is. And does your creative work influence your photojournalism at all or are they completely separate? I think in that respect they are completely separate, but I do want to tell stories with my abstract and creative photography. So in that respect photojournalism has influenced. that part. So I'm not anymore happy just going around with my camera and clicking just one picture here and another snap there, but I want to do stories and series and focus on that. And I'm sure the photojournalism background has the influence there. Yeah, I would expect so. why ICM? Why intentional camera movement? What is it about that genre of photography that really pulls you in? Well firstly it is that there are no rules and it's so different than the documentary work. Earlier I wanted to do my own projects before I discovered ICM. I wanted to do my own projects besides my work, work work. And every project I came up with was documentary. and I didn't feel at all that I'm charging my batteries. I want to do photography on my free time as well, but I didn't feel that it was different enough from my work work photography. And then when I discovered ICM, I realized that it's so different that I still enjoy doing it and it's something that really charges my batteries as well, doing creative work. But why ICM, why not something else? I have tried to put four words describing my photography and myself and my artistic work. And one of them is visualizing the unseen. And I think ICM is a great tool for that because you can take a picture of your kitchen utensils. and the picture looks like a swan taking a flight. So you can take a picture of something and it turns into something else. And I think in that respect visualizing the unseen works really well. And I just really love ICM because it has so many elements of surprise which come along and enhances the work. So these two things have got me hooked. I traveled in Iceland. I went for a week, a bus tour around the country. And as we all know, Iceland is nothing but wonderful scenery and icebergs and glaciers and mountains and whatnot. Everything is beautiful. But during this week, we had a foggy and cloudy weather just about every day. So I started to entertain myself taking pictures out of the bus window as we were driving because there was nothing there. But the soil, the ground in Iceland, it has like all the colours of a rainbow. So I started to take pictures of the soil, the ground. And I started to experiment with different shutter speeds and they got longer and longer and longer. And when I came home, thought, hmm, this is really interesting. I like this stuff. And then there was a restaurant which had just been renovated in my town. And I contacted the interior designer and I showed these pictures and she bought like ten of them to the brand new restaurant walls. And I thought, hmm, if she likes this, there must be something in it. I have to continue. And then I just, I was hooked. It does seem that ICM is very popular these days. It seems to really resonate with a lot of photographers. Why do you think that is? I think in the last five years it has really risen its head and become more and more popular. I think one of the reasons is that people are kind of, I don't know if the word tired is the right one, but kind of tired of doing the same traditional, same that they do themselves and same as everyone else does. and people have started to look for some new avenues to discover. And ICM certainly gives you a good avenue because you can't repeat one picture. And if you go to some beautiful landscape scene like Grand Canyon, everyone practically takes pretty much the same picture standing there on the south rim. But if you take an ICM picture, definitely is very different. So I think that's probably one of the reasons. And yeah, maybe the main, I don't know. Do you feel that non-photographers are more open to ICM or looking at ICM pictures now than they used to be or do you still have to kind of explain what it is? Yes, I do. I think I still do. I still get these comments when I'm out on the field, but someone who walks by says, if you hold your camera this way, doesn't shake so much. Or someone who views my work on the wall says, why don't you get yourself a tripod? So there is still a lot of this around, but... especially within photographers, because they know how to do it properly, But I think people who are not photographers, who are art enthusiasts, they are very open to ICM and you don't have to prove anything to them. You can explain what you've done and why the picture looks the way it is and what the technique behind is, but they are quite thrilled. And you don't have to explain so much why you want to do something like this. But to photographers, you probably have to kind of explain a little more. But I have to say that I'm far past the point. where I have to explain to other photographers why I do this. mean, if they don't like it, it's absolutely fine. I do it for myself, not for the big photography, photographer audience. Mm-hmm. Now, the seasons in Lapland are extreme. And is that part of what inspires you, or is that just a massive challenge? It's definitely an inspiration. I love it that we have very specific, different types of seasons. We have the four seasons, but in between we have a short, sort of a transitional season. So we actually call that we have eight seasons here. And that originally has come from the Sami people, so the indigenous people of Lapland, while they have... hundreds of years ago, migrated with their reindeer. And the reindeers move from place to place according to the seasons. And they have kind of like eight places where they stay. So that eight seasons of Lapland comes from there. But it is true that we do have eight seasons. And I find it very inspirational because the light is different every season. So that is so beautiful. And the colors, I'm a color freak so... Do you have a favorite season? winter and actually the winter that we live right now, the polar night, when the days... this sounds crazy but... So the polar night is the time when we don't actually see the sun. It doesn't mean that it's pitch black here. It's like the sun is up for just a touch above the horizon for like three and a half hours. which means we have three and half, a little bit more, we have like five hours, we have first dawn and then we have dusk. And it's like wonderful color all that five hours. It's not very bright bright, but it's very very beautiful. If the weather is cold and the sky is clear or we have nice clouds. But if it's like today, which is zero degrees and it's almost raining and it's wet and it's grey, that's not very good. But other than that, yes, this is my favourite season. I was born in December, so maybe it has something to do with it. Yeah, maybe. I will never know. so if you unexpectedly have a day free for photography where do go and what do you shoot If I'm at home, I go to my home forest, which is like a mile from where I live. And it's a forest that hasn't been cut down like 400 years. So I go there. I go there every day. I go there even on my workday morning or on my free day. and on my work days I often don't bring my camera, I just go there to get inspiration and get wired up. And on my free day I would go there with my camera and I would photograph the trees and the rocks and now that we have snow I would photograph branches with snow on them or cliffs with snow around. Yeah, that's my place. Sounds lovely, sounds lovely. Now you mentioned you still work as a photojournalist. Are you freelance or do you work for a particular organization? No, I'm a freelance. So I have maybe 50 different magazines that I work for. Because here in the North where I live, not anything newsworthy goes on like on a daily basis, not even on a monthly basis. So most of the work that I do is photographing people who have done something and a story is written about them. I have to have a very wide clientele of magazines because they might write something about here, something from here like once a year, twice a year or something like that. So you have to have a lot of magazines in order to fill your calendar. But before the COVID, I did on the average like five photo shoots per week. Now I do one or two. So COVID of course wiped everything out from the calendar for a long time and it hasn't really built up to the same level. And I have purposely kind of stopped marketing because I want to put more and more time in my artistic part. So one or two photoshoots per week is fine. It's great. Yeah. Yeah. You teach intentional camera movement in person and online. What do you see people struggle with most when they're trying ICM and what helps them break through it? I think the biggest struggle is to let go, to start to play and be out of control in a way. You're kind of out of control of the end result because in ICM there is always an element of surprise. So you never know if you shake your camera this way or that way. You can never be sure what the end result is. Even if I do it again, second time, same subject. the result is different. So accepting the fact that you are not 100 % in control, I feel that that is a very big kind of struggle people have. But once they get over with, once they have a few successes and they start to trust themselves in the process, then they get over the struggle. it kind of takes several accidental successes, let's put it this way, first. And I hate to say this, but I think that men have more struggle than women to get over with this control. And... Many men I find are very technically oriented. They have the best gear and the best lenses and the best this and the best that and they expect the best, the sharpest, the pin sharp results and whatever. Now when they have all this but they still don't have control, 100 % control over the end result, it makes them struggle more. I think women probably a little bit more, they go with the feeling. And they quicker, they kind of are able to accept that you are not 100 % in control. And this is play. It's not serious. Men are probably a little bit more serious. But women are faster to adapt that this is play. I think, yeah. I don't know about, do you do much processing of your images? Because when I shoot ICM, often the results are a little on the flat side. So I find they need a bit of a tweak to bring them out. And I wonder if that's also a stumbling block for some people when they're learning. They're looking at the picture on the back of the camera and thinking, but this doesn't look like yours. And it's because yours has been processed. I mean, not heavily, but it's had some sort of work done on it to bring out what you want to show. Yeah, think all ICM images benefit from a little bit of processing. So little bit of contrast tweaking because when you move your camera across the subject, they all blend together and you lose contrast. Of course, it's also a matter of choosing your subject so that there is enough contrast, whether it's color or light. So they all need a bit of tweaking in post-processing. But my aim has always been one minute per picture. So I do a very quick exposure that it's okay, contrast, saturation if needed, you either add it or you just subtract it. But the biggest time I need is to remove all the dust spots from the sensor dust. That goes often more than for one minute. Yeah, that is the worst aspect of ICM, isn't it? Because it really stands out if you've got dust marks. It's terrible. And it's kind of a waste of time, I find. To put your time in 20 minutes into putting, you know, taking those dustpots out. But mine is very quick. And then of course I do the cropping if needed and straightening horizons if needed. But I hardly ever need to crop my pictures. They're almost all full frame. What I do. Yeah. Now, you run a gallery. In fact, you're sitting in it now in your hometown. What made you decide to open a gallery and how has that experience influenced you in your photography, if at all? Um. I had absolutely no intention to have a gallery. I don't say ever. I did 20 years ago. It was a dream. But then I forgot the dream. But I was looking for a workspace. I had had one for a long time, like for 10 years or so. But it got sold and I had to move. So I was looking for a new space. And really what I was looking for was just a small studio space where I can do some studio work if needed and a small room where I can do the post-processing. But then there was a house that came for sale right next to my home. Like practically this is two doors down. And ended up buying it. It's big house, has seven rooms, two floors and 200 square meters of space. For a year I used the small room for post-processing where I'm sitting at the moment. I used a little bit of the studio space. I don't do very much studio work at all. Then I started to think that this is crazy. I have all this space. And all I do with it is kind of call my ego, which room are you in today? Where are you hiding today? That this is crazy, that I have to start to do something with this house. And then I thought, okay, I'll start to promote this studio photography. But if I had exhibitions here, people would come to see the and then I could market the studio photography part as well. So I thought, okay, let's start that. And I set up my first exhibition that was my own work and that was 2018. I bought the house in 2017. And I noticed the initial aim was to promote the studio work. Today I feel like I'm going to sell all my studio equipment and lights because I don't use them at all anymore. It's all now just the exhibitions and the gallery work. And then I realized that I can't simply have my own work only here all the time if the locals are my market. my customers, so I started to invite also other artists to come and have exhibitions. And that's it just started to roll, but it's absolutely no business at all. It's a hobby, but it's a fun hobby, I have to say. Yeah, yeah. not everyone has the luxury of having their own gallery to display their images, but you have had exhibitions internationally, haven't you? What would you say you've learned along the way that you could pass on to other people who might be looking to have an exhibition for the first time? Trust yourself. First of all, be proud of your work, what you have done. Have that self-confidence when you go and show your work to a gallery store, a place where you want the exhibition to be. Don't go there, excuse me, I'm nothing, but I have this. I think that's the first step you have to take. When you go and you plan the exhibition, don't go overboard. Don't try to put everything in, every single picture you think you like. Don't try to make the exhibition too full. Less is more is a good rule here also. And don't approach a gallery with a huge portfolio showing 100 images. And this is all of this is what I want to exhibit. Try to make a good selection, a consistent selection, in which all images speak to one another. In which every image has a purpose to be there. Make a good collection and then approach the gallery. Be proud of your work. And if you don't get accepted, it's not the end of the world. There are many other galleries you can try, and one of them eventually will work out. It doesn't mean that your work is bad. There's always one person who says, yes, we take this, or we don't take this, and it's his or her opinion. But it doesn't make... It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with the work if they say that, no thank you, then you go to the next place. But it's not easy to get an exhibition. It's not easy. Galleries are booked up well in advance aren't they you know you're talking at least 12 months ahead if not more yeah, yeah. And that I find a challenge myself and with, I'm sure others do as well, is that you have an idea today and you want to approach the gallery with the idea that in one year I have the series ready. So that is quite a challenge, how you show your idea, how you write about it, how you talk about it and how you have a few images as an example. And then you convince the galleries that this will be a great series which will fill the whole space. think it's important to remember that obviously you know if you're approaching a gallery for the first time you will be nervous but the point is to try and, not be arrogant, but to act like you're confident, even if you're not feeling confident and like you say don't say I'm sorry and apologize for everything but just explain yourself and try and be as confident sounding as possible Yeah, absolutely. I would say here maybe if you are not confident, pretend. Just pretend. Go there and pretend. That might help a lot. I think it's really good to practice answers as well. You know, if somebody said, well, why should we take your work? Have that in your mind. Have already have said it to somebody so that you're not trying to think of the answer when you're speaking to them. You know, actually be able to say it straight out. Yeah, absolutely. You have to be well prepared and you have to think about these questions, what they might ask. And then practice out with a friend or with someone, with your husband or your wife or whatever. Make them ask the questions and answer loud. It's really important. I feel that you answer loud, you speak them out, not just think, but you actually say the words out, you you say the answers out loud. That helps a lot. It helps to sort of arrange your ideas and your thoughts. It helps you to realize that, okay, that wasn't a very good answer. And this is the line I need to be there. But if you just think of it in your head, it doesn't have the same purpose. Yeah, definitely practice. Yeah, okay. Well, I think that's a great time to go to Six from SheClicks. I have 10 questions from SheClickers and I would love you to answer six questions please by picking numbers from one to 10. So could I have your first number please? I take seven. Number seven, how do you balance the demands of all your different strands of work? That question is from Liz. Oh Liz, that is such a good question. I am very fortunate that I have a husband who takes care of everything at home. So it gives me a whole lot of time, more time in a day. I mean, he does the cooking, he goes to the store, he does the shopping and the laundry and the cleaning and the dog and everything. So that gives me many hours more. Sounds like a great guy too. Yeah, very important guy. He's the least bit interested in arts, but he supports me in other ways, which is very important. And I think that is also something in life that's good to remember, that not everyone is interested in the same things. And in a relationship, I can't... demand him to be interested in my art. But I really appreciate that he supports me. He wants me to do what I love to do. But that's one way I can balance. secondly, I have to learn to say no to some things. And I have, I have learned, it's been super difficult journey, but I have learned so that earlier. If I had one photo shoot in my calendar, let's say 12 o'clock, and I know that it takes two hours, and then someone calls me and asks to be somewhere at two o'clock, I would say, yeah, I tried to make the other one an hour earlier and you know, I tried to fix everything and I'll move this here and move that there and yeah, I think I can fit this in. But now I have learned that if I have it at 12... I say I'm sorry if there's no other time I can't make it. And then there's also some subject matters which I don't do anymore. army-related things is one of them. I'm so full of this, what goes on in the world. And we have here a very big sort of an army rehearsal area. It's the biggest in Europe. There's some activity going on all the time. And now that Finland joined NATO a couple of years ago, we have a lot of international activity there. And so we have a lot of... newspapers and especially international newspapers who are interested what goes on there in this time of the world. So they call me, they ask if I can go there and do a photography for them for two days. I'm always busy. My calendar is absolutely fully booked. Because they take energy, you know, if you're doing something which is against your values, they take so much energy from you, not only the work, but mental energy as well. Yeah, yeah. So I feel that having learned to say no to a few things, it's also helped me to balance. Then I can do art. I can paint for the two days. That's important. Somebody said something to me the other day, which they said their business coach had said to them, which was, you can't always have an even balance of everything. Sometimes you have to put more effort behind one thing and other things have to go on the back burner a little bit. And then the things that are on the back burner, it'll become their turn to be at the front. So it's not about everything is even all of the time, which I thought was quite interesting. Yeah, I totally agree. And I think my photojournalism work now is the one that's moving into the back burner a bit. It's three. Number three, keep your images distinguishable from others? That question's from Marie-Ange. Well, thank you for the difficult question. I don't compare my images with others. Mm-hmm. I used to do that in early career in my photojournalism. I would always open the newspaper. I worked full time in a newspaper in the beginning. I would always open the newspaper and see what the others had done. And then if I had been somewhere where there were other photographers from other newspapers, I would look, how did they do this? And then I would say like, oh, I didn't do very good and he did better than me and da da da, I compared and that I of course learned from the others, which was good. But it also was a bit depressing. You know, it makes you feel worth nothing. But today when I do ICM, I don't compare my work anymore with anyone else. I want to work kind of for me and I want to make pictures which please me. And I don't think at all, I have never thought are my pictures distinguishable from others or not. I don't know. I don't know if I have a style. I do my own thing. They look the way they do and if someone can see, hey, that's Kaisa's image. That's surprising, but it may be they can see. I don't know. I haven't thought about it. When I worked in photojournalism, was then hoping that I would have a distinguished style and people could open the paper and say, OK, that's her picture. But with this work I do now. I don't think about that at all. But I, yeah, yeah. I think they may be different, but I don't know. We have to the audience. Yeah, we'll see what they say. So can I have your third number, please? That will be number 10. Number 10, do you know if viewers of your work see it in the same way as you envision it when creating it? Or do people have a totally different interpretation of it? And how do you feel about that? That question is from Maribel When I do the stories, the ICM stories. I have an idea that I want to visualize. And I often have some kind of a strong vision myself, what are all the pictures that will be in the story. They may not be there at the end, but I have a big vision in the beginning. Mm-hmm. I do it, I put it out in the world and I stop worrying about it. And if someone interprets it totally differently, I think it's just fine. I don't have a problem with that at all. I feel that as long as the picture somehow touched the viewer, Whatever they think, if it's the way I thought or if it's 180 degrees opposite, that's fine. As long as they touch somehow, they have been somehow successful. But if the people just look at the images and walk away and say nothing, then they were not very successful. But if they stop and they think and they wonder and they get an interpretation, That's great, whatever it is. Of course, if I add titles, the story always has a title. My stories always have a title, which already guides the viewer a little bit to that direction. The images may have titles, maybe half the time they have a title and half the time they don't have. Then that leads them even more into my direction. And sometimes I write a little text, what the story is about, then that of course leads them even more to that direction. But if they still interpret it the other way, another way, that's fine. I have no problem with I think that's a good way to be. So, it's one stress less. Fourth number is number four. Okay. What is your favourite subject for ICM now you touched on this earlier, that's from Marie-Ange. Well, I think nature in general is my favorite subject. But what it is in nature, I'm not picky. I can do trees. mean, just about everyone who starts ICM, they start with trees or some kind of a water mountain landscape. Of course I have been doing this for such a long time that I kind of look for new challenges. and when there's a moving subject. Or I am moving, like I am in a moving vehicle, like in a car for example. That brings a new, it's quite difficult. So that brings a new challenge and I like to do those. But what the subject is, it can be a train or it can be a bus or it can be a horse or whatever, whatever moves. I'm not very picky with that. But usually my subjects come one way or the other. They come from nature. But I do also like photographing people on ICM. I like that. Even people in a studio with ICM. I like that a lot. And I did a whole book on dancers. Where the dancers were moving and I was moving. Yeah, I was going to ask whether they were both elements moving Yeah, they were both moving. And that was in the beginning very challenging because I use, if I use like one second exposure time, a dancer has time to move a lot in that time. And usually when the second frame comes along, I've lost the dancer. I don't know anymore where is she? Where did she go? But in the book project, I had a choreographer who did a short choreography for the dancers. It was like 40 seconds long or something like that, one minute maximum. And they kept repeating it. So I would learn where do they go next. And it was easier for me to follow them. I knew that after this move they go left and after that they go up and so on. So that helped a lot. That was a very good tool there. Sounds like lot of fun as well. It was so much fun. It was so much fun. And of course it combined two elements. It combined the movement, which was challenging and fun, but it also combined being out in the nature. So in the book, all of the dance sessions were done out in the nature. And it's about the eight seasons of Lapland. So that was a lot of fun. It was experimental. And it was also fun for the dancers because they had not danced out in the nature before. So that was a good exercise for all of us. Yeah, sounds great. Okay, so can I have your penultimate number, please, your fifth number? It's number one. One What do you think makes a good ICM image? And that question is from several people. Oh, I'm glad that came up. This is of course my personal view. Mm-hmm. and many people like different things, but in an ICM image pretty much the same elements make a good image as for a traditional image. So probably for me the most important thing is that the image is not too busy. It doesn't have too many elements. You can imagine, we all can imagine that if you have a wide-angle lens, like... 60mm lens and you see a lot of the surroundings and then you take an ICM of that. It's a subject that has million little things going on and then you take your camera and you swash it around and all those million things start to run around in your picture. It gets so busy and so rushed. I don't like that personally. I I like a good wide angle shot. but only with a few elements. So that is probably the most important for me, that it's not too busy, that the composition is good, that there is enough contrast between the elements that there are, whether it's light contrast or colour contrast. I find that very important. And there must be some kind of a hook in the picture that catches my eye. And I start to stare at it and wonder, what is it? my imagination starts going and I start to build this story in my head about this picture, which may be the story the person who created it had in mind or it may not be. And then of course in ICM is that the more you study one image, the more you can start to see elements which aren't actually not, which hadn't been in the original subject. So combination of those. Okay, do you feel it's important for people to look at an ICM image and be able to work out what the subject was? You know, they can look at it and say, that's a flower, but you know, this blur effect has happened because of ICM. Or do you feel the opposite? You know, is it better sometimes when you look at it and you've got no idea what it is? I don't feel at all it's important to know what it is. A lot of people who have little experience with abstract, they kind of demand themselves to identify what it was. I don't feel it's important. To me, it's more important that the picture I'm looking at sparks my imagination and starts to create stories in my head, or it's just visually pleasant and beautiful to look at. So I like those factors more. but let's say if there is an element that I can identify, it can be an extra bonus because it probably creates even a better story and it gives you a wow, you can photograph a flower that way. You know, it gives you a big inspiration. I have never photographed a flower that way. I have always taken a traditional one. and it brings extra qualities to the picture. either way, but no, it's not important for me to be able to say for sure that actually I like those images even more, which are of something and they look like something else. So I really enjoy those images myself. Okay. All right, so it's time for your last number, please. I didn't have six yet, I? No, you didn't. So, ever feel pigeonholed or constrained to shooting ICM? That question is from Paula. so I don't. I don't feel that. When I travel... I have bit of difficulty deciding which I do first. if I go like now I went to Antarctica, of course I want to take traditional images of Antarctica and I need them for my job and etc. So I have a bit of problem myself. Which one do I do? Which one do I do first? Do I remember to stop whatever I started with? Do I have enough time for ICM if I first take the traditional ones etc.? So that is difficult but it doesn't come from the outside. No. I'm uh totally happy to do both. If I'm known more as an ICM photographer... That's great, but I still feel that I'm allowed to take traditional images or vice versa. If I'm known as a photojournalist, I still feel that I'm totally allowed to take ICM. But every time if I travel in a group, every single time I hear a... the rest of the group, at least one or two people in the rest of the group saying, you come all this way to do these blurry pictures? And I'm like, yes, isn't that great? liberating. Well, Kaisa, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. It's been absolutely fabulous to hear from you. Thank you so much. Thanks for inviting me. Thank you. very welcome. Thanks for listening to this episode of the SheClicks Women in Photography podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. Special thanks to everybody who sent in a question. You'll find links to Kaiser's website and social media channels in the show notes. I'll be back with another episode soon, so please subscribe to the show and tell all your friends and followers about it.