Woman in motion

 
One of my obsessions is depicting motion. I'm fascinated by it and enjoy the challenge of trying to capture it in a pleasing way. For a while now I've wanted to take a picture juxtaposing something heavy and stationary with something light and in motion. A week ago I set out to take that photograph using kettlebells and a very active Treefrog working out in the background. Instead I ended up with a kettlebell still-life. A few days ago, I revisited that notion and instead ended up with an exploration in framing. Today I finally came close to getting what I wanted with this shot: a combination of heavy, motionless weights and a blur of frenetic, organic motion.

I took it by placing the camera on the mats and auto-focusing on the mats in the background. I manually set the ISO to 100 to reduce the noise as much as possible. Then I set the shutter to 1/3 sec (determined through trial & error), used the 2-sec timer delay to minimize vibrations, and released the shutter.

I did this several times. Every time I did it I got a different effect. Treefrog was running through a series of exercises from box jumps to kettlebell swings to burpees to squats. Each one produced its own weird imprint. This is her doing sit-ups. In many of them, she was moving so fast she was a mere wisp of motion, almost like a gym ghost. The sit-ups helped preserve some of her form because her legs were somewhat stationary. An open door just out of view to the right provided an interesting light source that helped to outline her arms. I adjusted the color levels in GIMP to bring out some more of the mid-tones, then used Picasa's Filtered Black & White feature and crop tool.

For more shots like this one and others from today's WOD, go to Treefrog's Poison.