Secrets of Professional Photography: Jiri Hrebicek Interview

When you shoot a promising burst of images, you probably delete the ones that didn’t turn out well. The blurry ones go first, of course. But I suspect that for my guest today, it’s exactly the opposite – he deletes everything that’s sharp. In this episode of Secrets of Professional Photography, Jiri Hrebicek introduces us to how motion blur can be elevated to art.

In preparation for this interview, I took a look at Jiri’s portfolio and counted all the sharp photographs in it. Summing them up and checking my math, I got a surprising number – one. Just check it out for yourself; one blurry photo after another.

Still, Jiri’s photographs are beautiful and incredibly artistic. The courage with which he can abandon descriptive detail gives his photographs another dimension. A dimension that is largely created by the viewer’s imagination and willingness to get into the mood of Jiri’s images. The viewer is thus not just a passive consumer, but in a way a co-creator of the overall impression of the photograph.

Perhaps it is because of this personal involvement that Jiri’s works have become so imprinted in my brain that I can recall many of them in all their (blurred) details even after a long time. I once juried a photography competition. Thousands of more-or-less perfect photographs. Suddenly a deliberately blurry photo appeared on my monitor, and it stood out. I later learned that Jiri was the photographer.

Just like me, many other jurors were and are impressed by Jiri’s works. The proof of this is the ever-growing list of awards from many prestigious competitions around the world, such as Nature Photographer of the Year, Festival de l’Oiseau et de la Nature, Bird Photographer of the Year, and many more.

I interviewed Jiri Hrebicek to find out the secrets of his artistic approach. Our conversation is reproduced below.

Jiri, I’ll start with the competitions. The list of them is so long that if I were to list them all, there would hardly be room for questions. So I’ll ask it another way. Do you notice an increased interest in your work thanks to winning competitions? Does this reflect in any way in the sales of your images, offers for exhibitions, or in any other way?

Yes, success in a competition sometimes generates attention to my pictures, which then results in an invitation to give a lecture on how my photographs are made or an offer to organize an exhibition. That makes me even happier than success in a competition. Competitions are good feedback for me, but even better feedback is when people come into contact with my photos for the very first time. I like to see their immediate reaction when my photos look different from the nature photos they know and expect.

I ask because when I raised this question with Ondrej Prosicky, I got an unexpected answer. Namely that photographs winning competitions tend to be commercially unsuccessful, and vice versa. Do you have a similar experience?

I don’t sell enough photos to have a complete comparison. But it is a fact that people who are interested in my work because of a competition or who have seen my photos by chance at an exhibition, often choose something completely different, which has caught their eye on my website.

Just recently I was quite surprised when I received an email from my ordering system on the site that a client had ordered a 120x80cm portrait of an orangutan. So I thought I’d better confirm with him, as I was under the impression that the photo had been received rather negatively. But he even invited me to his house and proudly showed me how the orangutan looks great in his place. For me personally, this enthusiasm and joy for my photo is the greatest appreciation of what I do.

In what form are your photographs most often sold? Printed images, the digital version?

So far, it’s about half and half. With people from abroad, I usually agree to sell the photo in digital form, because it’s easier than sending them an already printed photo. But my preference is for a personal handover, when I have the print of the photo under my control and can then give it over to the new owner.

I’ve tried giving my older – I mean sharp – photos to a few stock photo websites, but it’s just a marginal income. Today it makes more sense for me to focus on promoting these more art-oriented photographs. These will probably always be on the periphery of the interest of the wider public, but they will certainly find their audience. There are still plenty of people who appreciate it when a photographer leaves room for their imagination and feelings, even if it’s “just” a photo of a bird or an animal.

Let’s go back to the beginning. I remember that when we were together in Colombia about seven years ago, you were already looking for different images than us, the classic wildlife photographers. Still, I don’t recall seeing blurry photos on your screen back then. How did you start down that path?

Well, the trip to Colombia in 2015 was one of the last times I took exclusively sharp photos. But I’ve had a bit of a photographic crisis for a while now. I love nature and animals and wanted to stick with it, but at the same time I see photography as an art form, so I struggled with not being able to get some of my feelings and moods into my photos. Even when I tried to look for other themes, I always felt that anyone else standing in the same place with the same technique would take the same or similar photo.

Around that time, I first saw the photographs of Dutch photographer Jan van der Greef on the internet. And I can still remember exactly how amazed I was by what I saw – scenes of African nature… but which looked like impressionistic paintings. I didn’t understand at all how it was possible to create something so beautiful, and I immediately felt that this could be the thing that would help me to get something of myself and my perception of the world into the photos.

On my next trip to Hokkaido, I remembered these photos and adjusted my camera to get a slightly longer shutter speed and started experimenting.

Early in the trip, something happened that I took as a sign. I was shooting in one place and not really enjoying it, so I started walking around. Of all things, I then ran into Jan van der Greef in person. Yeah, the same Jan whose photos appealed to me so much.

We started talking, and I got my first tips from him about long exposure wildlife photography. Before we said goodbye, we agreed to go to Norway together to shoot this type of photo. It was a serendipitous meeting.

And so a new Jiri Hrebicek was born. That’s great. I think you’ve managed to build a distinctive style, which is not easy in this business.

I must admit that when I was thinking about your photos – and I mentioned it in the beginning of our conversation – the word courage came to my mind. I see myself searching for days or weeks for an animal, and when I finally find it, I would never be able to set a long exposure and make a smudge out of it. Just imagining it makes me break out in a cold sweat.

That’s exactly right. I don’t break out in a cold sweat, but my hands are shaking. When I know I’m witnessing a unique moment that may be completely wasted just because I’m taking a blurry photo. Fortunately, with long exposure photography, shaky hands are desirable and make for unusual and abstract photos. Another good way to achieve abstract photos is to shoot while driving or at least leave the engine running to help get the lens moving a bit while shooting.

If possible, I carry two cameras – one set for sharp photos and one set for blurry ones. But I usually automatically reach for the one for blurry photos during the trip, because I’m getting more and more tired of the normal, sharp photos of animals – not just photographing them, but also looking at them. That’s why I now prefer to try painting with my camera, even at the cost of not getting any photo at all. I enjoy the process of creating and experimenting, and when I’m surrounded by beautiful nature, then nothing else matters.

I guess you don’t care about such a mundane thing like lens sharpness, or am I wrong? I remember you used to use a fixed 300mm Canon lens. What is your current “brush”?

I have to say that shooting with longer exposure times completely freed me from the technical aspects of photography. So I don’t worry about how well this or that camera focuses, how many pixels it has, or how sharp the lens is and how well it renders the images. And thus I can use the camera like a painter’s brush and try to capture something that the human eye doesn’t even see. It’s like trying to capture a dream or the soul of an animal.

The brush for me is still a Canon, and I’ve just changed the lens. Instead of the 300mm prime, I’ve taken a liking to the 70-200mm, which gives me more freedom to find the composition. I can also give the bird or animal in the photo more space. Minimalist “blurs” are also an interesting discipline.

Lately, I’ve been shooting with even longer exposure times than usual (e.g. 1 to 5 sec) to be able to artistically capture even relatively static scenes. That’s why I’m now trying Olympus, where I’m impressed by one of its features (live composite), where one can see the photo being taken live and stop the exposure at any time.

Aside from the camera and lenses, what other pieces of gear are in your photo bag? Is there anything in it that would surprise me?

Probably the main thing is the various ND (neutral density) filters that allow me to shoot in almost any lighting conditions. I can’t even imagine shooting with longer shutter speeds without them. But they’re probably not in most wildlife photographers’ bags.

Once the photo is taken, how far is the journey from the captured RAW to the finished image?

I am often confronted with the question of how much my photos are real and how much are they the result of Photoshop. But here I can say with a clear conscience that almost all photos are taken directly in the camera. As you mentioned at the beginning of the interview, I submit photos to photo competitions, and they usually want to see the original RAW if the photo gets shortlisted.

So I usually just do minor edits in Capture One and then Photoshop (adjusting contrast, curves, minor retouching). Fortunately, I don’t have to deal with sharpening and de-noising and instead focus on the overall atmosphere of the photo.

That said, I’m not concerned with capturing reality, but with creating an impression or illusion. So I don’t have to stick strictly to how the scene really looked. It frees me up a bit.

If I want to try to take a photo like Jiri Hrebicek, how should I do it? Not that I can’t take an unsharp photo, I have no problem with that. You know what I mean… Could you pick a few pieces from your portfolio and describe the process of making them?

Of course. This photo (shown below) was taken during my regular walks to a nearby park, where I tried the technique of combining a static scene with intentional camera movements during a single exposure on swans and crows. I chose a time of 2 seconds, holding the camera still for about 0.5s to keep the crow silhouette relatively sharp. Then I used the remaining 1.5s of exposure to point the lens at the crown of a neighboring tree and move it around a bit for the rest of the time, giving the photo a texture that gave it a bit of an impressionistic feel.

This next photo was taken after a discussion with a friend who had been experimenting with double exposures. I started to think how to get the double exposure effect in one exposure. And I realized that if I increase the exposure time enough, I can get that sort of effect

In this case, I exposed the elephant scene for about one second, then pointed the lens toward some trees on the horizon for another second. It takes some experimentation and trial and error. Fortunately, the elephant wasn’t in a hurry, so I had a chance to get a few shots before I finally took one I was happy with.

For the next photo, my intention was to capture the wing movement of a seagull just leaving the surface of the water. I had to find the camera angle where there was a dark background behind it. This gave the photo the contrast it needed to make the wing movement visible in the photo.

The shutter speed I chose was 1/15 second. This kept the head and body relatively sharp while blurring the wing movement a bit. The gulls were flying away one by one, so the hardest part was guessing which one would fly away next.

Listening to you, I think I’ll go out and try to smudge something. Can you give me some suggestions on where to start?

Anyone can try it without having to travel far. Birds are a good first subject. The ideal places are those with larger birds that are habituated to humans. Somewhere in a park, near the ocean, or even in a zoo.

Unless you have a bit of experience with this and have an ND filter, it’s better to try it in the evening, where you can get longer exposure times. For starters, a shutter speed of 1/20 or 1/30 second is enough. You can build from there as you get better at understanding motion.

Then just pick a subject, preferably one with a predictable direction of movement, and start experimenting. Try to think about subject separation from the background. Search for backgrounds that are different in color from the subject.

What if someone found such a liking for your photographic technique that they wanted to learn directly from you in the field – is there any chance? Do you also organize workshops, or do you keep your secrets to yourself?

I’m certainly happy to share my experience. If anyone is interested in learning more about long exposure photography, they can contact me. I already have a few people interested in shooting together, so I want to organize a one-day workshop at the zoo first, followed by a shorter trip somewhere in Europe. I would also love to return to Bosque del Apache in New Mexico. It’s an absolutely perfect place for creative work. So it’s definitely possible to arrange some individual workshops there if any of your readers are interested.

Your first images, and in fact most of your photographs, capture animals. That is, creatures that move. But lately I see that you are moving towards very impressive photos of landscapes. Of course, blurry ones, too. If there’s any genre of photography obsessed with sharpness and resolution, it’s landscape photography. Could you tell me something about that?

This may just be a natural progression. It started with my attempts to use long exposures on static scenes where the animal is not moving. From there it’s just a logical step to try to capture the landscape completely without the animal.

Hopefully these photographs will find their viewers who will want to engage their imagination and be drawn into the mysterious landscape. Viewers who won’t immediately reject the photograph just because it’s not sharp or technically perfect.

You published your first book this summer. Could you introduce it to us? Where can I buy it?

I originally wanted to make a book for myself and my friends, but eventually I managed to get it published.

With the help from people my friends recommended, I believe that we managed to make an interesting book. The photos, taken in my favorite place in Norway, became the basis for a beautiful story written in a few short chapters by Nina Djakovic. And the final form was created by Lucie Mrackova using modern graphic design.

It can be purchased through my website, where anyone interested can choose whether they would like it in print or as a PDF e-book.

Jiri, do you have an image in your head that is waiting to be transformed into reality, but at the same time you feel that it will be a tough nut to crack?

I don’t think I have a dream image. But one day, when the mythical Irbis appears in front of my lens, I hope I will find the courage to blur it.

Thank you to Jiri Hrebicek for sharing his techniques with us in this interview! If you want to contact Jiri or see more of his photos, you can do so on his website.