Poetry In Motion

Ty Iwakiri was the winner of the Wet and Wild Challenge for the week and what an image he had. To me it really showed off the commercial side of photography and his talent for creating amazing images, My hats off to Ty, a photographer with an amazing future ahead of him!

Ty has Issued the Challenge of Motion this week and I wanted to touch briefly on the issues when capturing motion. Although shutter speed can play a key role in showing motion, like any other photograph you have to have your exposure set correct to get the results your looking for. For sharp wildlife I usually start my shutter speed off with the same speed as the  #mm of the lens, for example if I am shooting a 400mm lens I will start with a 1/400 (or as close as I can get) shutter speed for an animal that is still. If the animal is moving that number goes up significantly and numbers in the 1000-2000 range are not unusually.

Ok now lets say we are shooting a woman running with a 85mm lens on a tripod @ 40ft. We know if she was standing still that you can technically shoot down to 1/85 with her sitting still and get tack sharp images (sometimes lower but not by much). So the same woman is out running lets bump that shutter up to 1/800 focus on the eye, pan smoothly - Click! Most likely what you just realized is that you froze her in motion with a blurred back ground. Want to get artistic? show her legs in motion but keep the head and most of the body in focus? Slow that shutter speed a little.

Smooth panning and appropriate shutter speeds are critical when moving objects. People, cars, animals. etc., can make for amazing motion photography if you take the time to do you homework on location.
Depicting motion can be a fun and exciting experience. and can bring really neat images to the table. Photographing light at night can be extremely fun and yield images that captivate.

The following 2 images were taken from the same spot. The first is a small boat that shows light trails that are interesting at best. The second is the light trails from a cruise ship as it leaves the Port. Both show motion in the light trails but for me the cruise ship shows a uniform pattern that pulls me in.

f9 @ 60 seconds, ISO equiv-100

f9 @ 96 seconds ISO-100 equiv.

Another form of motion, often over looked is the motion of your world. Star trails..., like light trails all it takes is some time and some unique lights. in this case the stars do most of the work. use the bulb mode, a low ISO, and an f stop that sits firmly in between I use f9 about 60% of the time, but lower for extremely dark areas outside of cities and towns is preferred. Use your bulb mode and think of times in several minutes. 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 60? find the north star and place it in your view finder along with a mountain scene or a tree in the middle of nowhere... you can really accomplish some amazing earth "motion" that way!

I would like to state that this is not the end all be all way of doing things but it does work well for me. As with any photography, there is an infinite way of doing things.

Good luck everyone, if you have any questions feel free to ask.