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.

More fun with motion

 
Today's workout was a beast. Burpees and Squats- lots of 'em. I wanted to do some more experimentation with slower shutter speeds so I delayed my own workout so that I could shoot everyone else's. This was probably one of the best ones I took. After MUCH trial and error (I started with my aperture too large and my shutter speed too fast) I finally started getting some decent shots. I like this one because it has a stationary subject as well as moving ones. John (in black) was about half-way through his workout when he took a few seconds to regroup. Ben and Raman (the blurs) were forging ahead in the background. To get the shot I used a shutter speed of 1/8 sec which is longer than I'm comfortable with and very difficult to hold steady. But I took advantage of John's stationary pose and focused on him and it worked out.

My one regret is that the ISO is so high (800), leading to more noise than I care for. By this time I had stopped down the aperture to f/11 so that I had a generous depth of field in which to work. This results in less light getting to the pixels, though, causing the camera to compensate by using a faster ISO. If I had used a wider aperture to let in more light, my pictures might have gotten more blurry due to the narrower focal range. It's all about trade-offs; my problem is, I don't know how many more feet each f-stop buys me in terms of depth of field so I can't estimate on the fly what my setting should be. This is why I experiment.

Here's another example of what happens when you experiment:
 
I honestly don't know how I got this shot, but it's kinda neat. I know I was playing with panning and the second curtain (also called trailing curtain) flash mode which synchronizes the flash with the end of an exposure. This gives a sharp crisp impression of the subject rather than an amorphous smear across the image. As you can see (and against all possible odds), Ben's face is in focus while everything else around him has a weird ethereal smeared look to it. What I think happened was this: instead of just snapping the picture and letting the trailing curtain flash do it's thing, I picked a point (his face) and panned the camera while he did his burpee to keep it stationary. This was a little tricky as you have to follow the person for a few reps and get a sense of their rate. (pssst- you get better shots toward the end of a workout because people are 1)slower, and 2)more expressive. A nice sheen of sweat helps to round out the image as well.) Anyway, somehow this shot came out but I'm not sure I could do it again. I also liked the color so I kept it as is.

For more of my experimental shots, check out Burpees Up, Squats Down.

Flirting with slower shutter speeds

 
One of the things I've been working on for a while is motion blur. It has such an aesthetic effect when done correctly, but it's so challenging to do well. If your shutter speed is too slow, you risk having everything blurred; if your shutter speed is too fast, you may have a nice sharp picture, but no sense of motion. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes you get bizarre shots like this one where athletes seem eerily suspended in space:
 
So far I've found that the most important thing in getting a decent motion blur shot (assuming the exposure is ok) is keeping your main focal point in focus. There are a couple of ways to achieve this, including panning or using a fancy mode on your camera called second curtain flash mode which will "freeze" the subject in space while preserving a trail of motion blur behind it.

In the picture of the guys doing squats, I chose a much less sophisticated option: timing. I simply waited until my subject was momentarily stationary to take the shot. Prior to this, I focused on Yong's face (in black) while he was standing still. Once they started doing squats, I timed my shot so that it clicked just as he reached the top of his extension. I used a 1/15 sec shutter speed to give a slight blur to everything that wasn't stationary; in hindsight, I probably could have gone to 1/30 sec to get some more detail in the other squatters. But the result is that his face is (relatively) in focus while everything else has a slight blur to it.

How to decide what shutter speed to use? I'm sure there are probably some rules of thumb but I don't know what they are. I just use trial and error. The challenge is that different movements have different rates of speed so one exercise (like squats) may use a relatively slow speed while running might need a faster shutter speed. Since I don't have an innate ability to know what blend of ISO, aperture, and shutter speed will result in the best image, I basically try them all. It results in a lot of throw-away shots, but every now and then I get a little closer and closer to the effect I'm seeking. More on this later as I continue to experiment.