Welcome to our P52! This project is designed to get you out with your camera once a week in a meaningful way. Each week I will post a prompt for you to consider. The prompts are merely suggestions, and you are free to shoot off topic if you wish. All images posted must be taken by you, be safe for work, and be taken with this project in mind. Please do not post archive photos. For a further discussion of the guidelines, please refer to this thread, and you can find the previous weeks linked there if you missed them. Feel free to join in at any time of the year, and you may go back to missed weeks if you still wish to participate.
Week 23: Movement
Hello, P52ers! This week we are going to consider the use and depiction of movement in our images. Often when we compose an image we are concerned with having everything in pin sharp focus. And this is a key foundational skill in photography. We never want to use too slow a shutter speed for fear of having an image that is just a bit blurry or out of focus, which therefore hampers our story. But if everything is super sharp, how do you convey movement? Luckily, there are numerous ways to show movement in photography.
One way, of course, is to keep everything in sharp focus and using a very high shutter speed to stop motion. This is a great technique if you have a fast moving subject: a ball, a runner, a crashing wave. It allows us to see minute details stopped in time that we cannot see in real time as the action unfolds.
Conversely, we can use a much slower shutter speed, and let objects in the frame travel throughout. Think of things like a babbling stream, a wave sliding into the shore; by using a long shutter speed this movement smoothes out the water, and we are left feeling the effects of time. Typically you will need to use a tripod or other sturdy surface for these images to work, as we only want the movement in the water or the main subject (perhaps a car or bicycle), as the main structure of the image stays in one place.
Another way is panning, which is a type of Intentional Camera Movement (ICM). With panning, you need a shutter speed that allows you to hold the camera at a relatively stable angle to the ground, and you move the camera in the direction of your subject, locked in at their speed; if you do it properly, your subject will stand out as a sharp point within a blurred frame that conveys the motion the subject is feeling as they travel.
A lot of feeling of movement can be conveyed just by the pose and body position of the subject. Kids jumping, dogs running where you can see multiple feet off the ground all lead to a sense of motion.
Lastly, we can also use actual ICM to create abstract style images; this is a very creative, and often frustrating technique, but when paired with good light and shadow can create very compelling images. I have personally only dipped my toe into this genre but it’s a good way to let loose with photography and just be free with your camera and no expectations.
Can’t wait to see what you all come up with this week!
Week 23: Movement
Hello, P52ers! This week we are going to consider the use and depiction of movement in our images. Often when we compose an image we are concerned with having everything in pin sharp focus. And this is a key foundational skill in photography. We never want to use too slow a shutter speed for fear of having an image that is just a bit blurry or out of focus, which therefore hampers our story. But if everything is super sharp, how do you convey movement? Luckily, there are numerous ways to show movement in photography.
One way, of course, is to keep everything in sharp focus and using a very high shutter speed to stop motion. This is a great technique if you have a fast moving subject: a ball, a runner, a crashing wave. It allows us to see minute details stopped in time that we cannot see in real time as the action unfolds.
Conversely, we can use a much slower shutter speed, and let objects in the frame travel throughout. Think of things like a babbling stream, a wave sliding into the shore; by using a long shutter speed this movement smoothes out the water, and we are left feeling the effects of time. Typically you will need to use a tripod or other sturdy surface for these images to work, as we only want the movement in the water or the main subject (perhaps a car or bicycle), as the main structure of the image stays in one place.
Another way is panning, which is a type of Intentional Camera Movement (ICM). With panning, you need a shutter speed that allows you to hold the camera at a relatively stable angle to the ground, and you move the camera in the direction of your subject, locked in at their speed; if you do it properly, your subject will stand out as a sharp point within a blurred frame that conveys the motion the subject is feeling as they travel.
A lot of feeling of movement can be conveyed just by the pose and body position of the subject. Kids jumping, dogs running where you can see multiple feet off the ground all lead to a sense of motion.
Lastly, we can also use actual ICM to create abstract style images; this is a very creative, and often frustrating technique, but when paired with good light and shadow can create very compelling images. I have personally only dipped my toe into this genre but it’s a good way to let loose with photography and just be free with your camera and no expectations.
Can’t wait to see what you all come up with this week!
