This week’s assignment was very cool, and a great learning experience for me!
In photography, we freeze time and action, but at the same time we can convey a sense of movement. Even when shot at a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action, a woman’s hair blowing in the wind, a young girl twirling in a dress or a runner caught mid-stride give the sense of movement. As photographers, we love to capture sharp images and know that we need to use a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action, but let’s intentionally show the movement of our subjects by slowing down our shutter speed and introducing motion blur into our images.
Assignment: Show us an image with movement. There are a couple of ways of showing motion blur and both involve using a slow shutter speed. In the first method, you will lower you shutter speed and increase your aperture (you have to compensate for the slow SS with a smaller f-stop and to get a sharper background, we aren’t looking for bokeh here) and capture your subject in motion. The second method is to pan your camera in the same direction as the subject. This will give you a sharp subject and a blurred background to show movement. Again you will be choosing a slow shutter speed and deep DOF (this will really help in getting your subject in focus). Focus on your subject and as they are moving past and twist your body in the direction of the movement. Using a burst mode to capture multiple images will give you better odds of getting the shot.
Your ISO will be low for this too. You might want to try this at a time of day when the light is a little lower or if you have a polarizing or ND filter (neutral density) use it if you are shooting in bright daylight conditions. Using a tripod or bracing yourself to prevent camera will be very helpful to keep your background elements sharp. Play around with different shutter speeds until you get the effect you are looking for. Your shutter speed will depend a lot on what you are shooting. A vehicle will require a faster shutter speed than a person on foot.
I had a lot of fun playing with this week’s prompt! And after trying to bribe my littles to help out (“If you jump on the trampoline so Momma can take some pictures, I’ll give you some jellybeans!”), Kaylee and I struck paydirt. She jumped for me, and I gave her a mini-class in my DSLR and slow shutter speed to help her with the settings for her own jump shots. Without further ado…
Settings: 1/60, f/16.0, ISO 100 at 40mm.
Settings: 1/20, f/20.0, ISO 100 at 40mm.
There’s a ton more outtakes in the March 2016 album on Flickr. This was another favorite:
