Playfully capturing the energy of the forest

A new series of photographs by Allan Deekshant Forest.

I knew little about energy before sitting in front of Osho while receiving sannyas in 1979. I was blasted by the energy of his profound presence and after he was finished speaking to me, I could barely stand or walk. I had to be helped back to where I had been seated and for the next two days I could hardly crawl out of bed from being comatose with flu-like symptoms.

After being initiated, my sensitivity to energy continued to evolve as I explored what the Universe had given me.

As a photographer, I have been intrigued with how to capture energy or at least the feeling of it. I have taken hundreds of photographs of the forest that are sharp images portraying trees as realistically as possible.

Then a year and a half ago something came to me about capturing the energy of the forest. I was unsure how I was going to do that but I surrendered to my intuition and spoke to the trees. I asked the unseen energies and elementals to come forth and show themselves.

I began shooting with slow shutter speeds while moving the camera in a variety of ways to produce a single unretouched image. I listened and played and came up with fascinating results that evolved as I experimented with technique.

Sometime after, as I was sharing these photographs on Facebook, someone told me my idea was actually a genre called ICM or Intentional Camera Movement. Other photographers have been doing the same thing in their own way. I curiously checked them out as my images continued to evolve in my own intuitive way.

I found myself looking at the photographs on my computer monitor getting high on the imagery from feeling into the energy. I often walked in the forest tuning in, while playing with different settings and motion techniques. At one point I started chanting in the forest while allowing the vibration of my voice to influence the image. By the time I finished, I could barely walk in a straight line, needing to ground myself before heading home.

After over 50 years, my passion has peaked once again as when I excitedly bought my first camera and began my journey as a photographer.