Motion Blur Techniques for Drive-By Photographers

[bvartak]

Hi All,

 

I found this one quite interesting to be done using A7Rii.. I hope somebody must have tried this... please share your experience and inputs. I plan to try this on coming weekend....

 

 

 

Although creating movement while the camera’s shutter is open seems straightforward, the variations of motion blur that result are as endless as your choice of motion. While the shutter is open, you can move the camera, your position, the subject’s position, or any combination thereof. The movement can be exaggerated or subtle, fast or slow, left or right, up or down, smooth or jerky; you can pan, zoom, rotate—the possibilities go on and on.

 

BLUR, PAN, AND STOP MOTION

One fundamental way to create motion when photographing a still subject is to move the camera. Using a combination of slower shutter speed and camera movement, you can introduce a motion blur into the image. Depending on the length, direction, and path of the camera movement, the resulting abstraction can create interesting shapes and ghostlike figures.

 

A common way to freeze the motion of a moving subject in a photograph is to move (track) the camera at the same rate of motion as the subject. For example, when photographing a car going around a racetrack, you would stand in one place, following the car with your camera. This technique is known as panning. Using a relatively fast shutter speed will stop the motion of the subject that you are panning with, but because the camera is moving in tandem with the subject, anything that is not moving at the same speed as the subject is typically blurred. This method is a great way to show the relationship of the subject within its environment.

Although the same panning technique was also used to create the images in Passenger Seat  [the book from which this article is excerpted], in this case, the photographer (and therefore the camera) was moving while the landscape (the subject) stayed fixed. The result was that the subject is seen as being motionless while its surroundings are in motion. However, I found that using a relatively fast shutter speed typically won’t create enough motion around the subject to make the image visually compelling. In order to add additional motion, the shutter speed must be slowed down.

 

The resulting images also turned out completely different based on the distance that the subject was from other foreground or background elements in the scene, the direction and speed of the vehicle, and the motion path of the camera (pan direction and motion path of lens); there was a continuum of “sharpness” and varying degrees of movement throughout the imagery. These images resulted from the unique orchestration of all these variables and the movements within the scene, all while the shutter was open.

 

Read full article on Adobe Create:

http://create.adobe.com/2016/1/8/motion_blur_techniques_for_drive_by_photographers.html?trackingid=QQ42PCNJ&mv=email

 

 

[Guest all8]

I've played with vertical movement when taking photos of trees, its pretty interesting, the effect, and worth experimenting with. I enjoyed it.