Motion Blur
Inspired by Juan Fernando Arboleda (@jufarbol on Vero), who is starting a motion blur project, I took an opportunity while waiting for an appointment, to try my hand at it. The photo above is by far my favorite of over 200 taken on this day.
As you can see when viewing the next several photos, I planted myself behind a fire hydrant and waited for cars to drive by. It took me a few tries to get the shutter speed slow enough to get the amount of motion blur I was happy with, about 1/10th of a second.
Neither my camera nor lens has vibration reduction or image stabilization, so it was a challenge keeping the hydrant in focus when shooting handheld with such slow shutter speeds. To keep from blowing out the image, I also had to attach a variable ND filter to my lens to reduce the ambient light by 6 or 7 stops. I always keep one in my bag in case I need it.
In the image above, I really like the light/dark contrast between the hydrant and the car. The motion blur of the wheels is also particularly appealing.
Below are a couple of additional photos that I thought were OK, but not in the top two:
I have to admit, with the hydrant being the only thing in focus, it looks photoshopped in, but it isn’t. Maybe next time I’ll try narrowing my aperture to get more of the photo in focus which will also reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor. Doing that could have eliminated the need for the ND filter.
In this last photo, I had just put my camera down to check on the last few shots, when this skateboarder can around the corner. As I looked up our eyes met, and he flipped his hair over his face, clearly communicating he did not want me to take his photo. So I waited until he passed and when he was framed between the tree branches, I took a couple of quick snaps, the shutter speed still at 1/10th of a second. Since he is moving in a direction roughly parallel to me instead of perpendicular to my lens, the blur from his motion is virtually unnoticeable. The motion blur in this photo is mostly from me trying to quickly get my camera up and focused.
I enjoyed this experiment and will look for more opportunities to try different methods.
If you found my photos remotely interesting, you might also be interested in the works of Ernst Hass, an excellent photographer who created some famous works using creative blur.
More about Ernst Haas:
A short list of motion blur photos on the Ernst Haas website
An hour-long video collection of Ernst Haas’ photos on the Great Photographers YouTube Chanel
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