Ghatahora Photography: Creating Movement

Monday 3 August 2015

Creating Movement - 03.08.2015

To add a little bit of creativity in your photographs, try zooming while the shutter is still open. It gives a sense of movement in your picture creating lines moving away from you or towards you.

There are many ways to achieve this effect, but the simplest method is to set the shutter speed at a longer exposure, then while taking the shot, zoom in or out from your subject. The zooming process takes between when the shutter opens and closes. This is often easier said than being put into practice, as very fast reflexes and timing is needed, requiring a lot of practice and experiment.

Below are a few tips to keep in mind when zooming while taking the shot:

Hold the camera steady - you will be using a slow shutter speed and any camera shake will cause the image to be too blurry and the motion lines will not be straight and sharp. Always use a tripod or hold the camera very steady.

The right aperture - as you are using longer shutter speeds, you let more light into your camera. To overcome this problem, choose an aperture with a larger ‘f’ number, as this will reduce the amount of light getting through the lens.

No zoom lens - if you don’t have a zoom lens, that’s not a problem as you can manually move the camera towards the subject or away from your subject. Keep in mind, you may get slight camera shake, but it’s still possible to have a good shot.

I took this photograph of the trees by pointing my camera up towards the leaves and I zoomed in while the shutter was still open. As you can see, the lines at the side of the image give an illusion of movement; drawing your attention towards the centre which is still relatively sharp.

I set the aperture to f11, increased the ISO to 640 (in order to get higher shutter speeds so that I can hold the camera steady), this gave me a shutter speed of 1/50. The colours of this image have been altered in photo shop, by simply decreasing the hue and increasing the saturation.

The following photograph has been taken in exactly the same way as the previous one using the same settings. Now that you have an idea how to create the feeling of motion in your photographs, why not try this technique with various subjects, such as traffic lights, flowers, group of people and even animals.