Studies in Motion - children at play

May 16, 2008

Motion and color. Children at Play. What more would you like to know?

Experimenting with colorful blurred motion in playing children seemed like a neat idea - so I ran with it yesterday evening to produce these strange blurred images. This is not a new technique. However it sure is fun when your subject is children playing, and those children are having a ton of fun - that means I have tons of fun too.

You'll notice two types of images in the slideshow below:

1. Camera in motion with the subject.
2. Camera still with subject in motion.

The first type of shot is mainly moving at the same speed as your subject with a slow shutter speed on your camera. I could have used a slow sync flash to give a crisper person with essentially a fill flash burst right before the shutter closes, but this is all available light shoot experimentation.

The second type of shot is where you'll want to steady the camera with a tripod, table, beanbag, your foot, or whatever else is at hand to provide a stable base for your camera while the shutter is open and your subject is in motion.

You'll find this all much easier with an SLR camera, but you can do it with a digicam - just turn off the flash and choose shutter priority mode (or something like it) and go with something slow at least 1/50th. Experiment! Some of these shots are several seconds at f/22.

Have fun!