Odd Bods - a different side of ICM

“Odd bod” (or “odd bods”) is an informal British term for a person who is unusual, eccentric or just a little bit strange.

When photographing the human form using ICM, I usually have a clear goal: to retain a sense of the subject's form and character, allowing it to remain recognizable. But ICM doesn't always cooperate. The combination of camera movement, shutter speed and subject movement can sometimes push the human form far beyond what was intended.

Under normal circumstances, undesired distortion renders the image unusable, and the result is quietly deleted.

But every now and then, something unexpected happens. A familiar human form becomes distorted, fragmented or strangely transformed, creating an image that may have little connection with the original intention but has an intriguing abstract quality of its own.

So rather than consigning these to the recycle bin, I've brought some of them together as Odd Bods - a collection of ICM's happy accidents.

Individually, they may not be the images I set out to make. As a group, however, I think they take on a different character and raise an interesting question: does an image have to succeed at what we intended for it to be successful?

Final thoughts

I'm curious to know what you make of the series, and the images themselves.

Do any of these Odd Bods catch your eye? Do you find the distortions interesting, amusing or simply unsuccessful?

And perhaps more importantly, do you have your own collection of happy accidents that you've never considered worth showing? Maybe they deserve a second look.