Waahoo!
I found an hour today to go out and try to complete the second part of my homework. I had to take a photo of something moving with a fast shutter speed and a slower shutter speed to see what effect it has on the feeling of movement in a photo.
Fast shutter speed = clear, no feeling of motion.
Slower shutter speed = blurred object, motion evident
For anyone who read my previous post on this week’s homework you may remember that I was a bit perplexed about how to get a steady shot of a fast moving object hand panning. After reading advice left from excellent photographers and fellow bloggers Mel Mann and Edith Levy (thank you both so much for leaving your comments, I found them invaluable and I think they really helped me get something useable) I grabbed my camera bag and drove to an area in Tea Tree Gully that I thought had plenty of traffic and some interesting things to photograph if I had trouble and needed cheering up!
I found it difficult, although not impossible, to get the panning speed right and ended up with about 4 shots that I was happy enough to use, so I HAD TO PICK ONE! I didn’t think THAT would be an issue, haha.
I also found that panning a car going directly past me was easier than trying to get them coming toward me at an angle. That may be obvious? But I had no idea. Still don’t really.
The other thing I actually found really frustrating was that I wanted to slow my shutter speed down below 1/3 to get a long trail for the stationary background, but I couldn’t get my camera meter to a correct light exposure with the shutter so slow. Anyway, I had to settle for a couple of pretty average shots. As you can see in the absence of the ability to make the moving object particularly interesting I tried to at least make the scene slightly interesting. Again, any suggestions of how to improve my settings would be appreciated because it is now obsessively occupying my mind.
A special mention to the man sitting on the pub verandah looking perplexed as I lay down on the footpath of a main road to try to get some stability by using my elbows as a makeshift tripod. He really did look like he thought I had lost my mind. He obviously doesn’t understand that my mind has been lost…to photography.
I will improve.
Learning the Light 