I bought this cute little outfit for Emma a few months ago, and I was waiting until she was able to fully sit up on her own to take her pictures.
Yes, then I procrastinated a bit more, and then I finally took her pictures one raining afternoon in October.
I wanted to dress her up like a little flapper girl with silly pearls, a headband…you know. The whole nine yards. Here are just a few of the pictures.
In my photography class, my professor always said that panning was one of the hardest ways to capture motion when taking a picture. I kind of agree. Getting something to be blurry is pretty easy, and stopping something is motion is also pretty easy…but getting something juuuust right is tricky. I am of the impression that if you take a billion pictures, one is bound to come out right, so here is my “just right.”
You can see that the subject’s face is mainly in focus as the rest of the picture is blurred to indicate movement. I found a few tricks that helped me get this blurred effect.
1. Slow your shutter speed. I used 1/10 of a second, but I’ve seen other places say somewhere from 1/30 to 1/60. Whatever works. Basically you want it slow enough that as you move the camera, the light will “blur” because of the movement.
2. Pick your subject. What are you trying to capture in motion?
3. Keep your lens in AF. The camera body can be in manual mode, but I find that it’s kind of hard to manually focus on the subject as it’s moving. If you wanna try to turn the lens as your subject moves toward/away from you, that’s an awesome skill to have–go for it.
4. Get a tripod if you can. The steadier the movement, the better.
5. Pan or move the camera with the subject. You should start to follow the subject in your viewfinder early on (1). If you hold your shutter down half-way, it will help focus on the subject. As you turn your body to continue following them, press the shutter when the subject reaches your focus point (2). Even after you have pushed the button, continue to follow the subject smoothly along the path (3).
Don’t laugh at my little paintbrush drawing.
6. If you have a friend or husband who can continuously repeat motion for you, try taking a 50+ of him riding his bike around and around in circles, so you can get the perfect shot. 🙂
Thank you, Peter!
I have been waiting for this day to arrive. It’s new camera lens day! I am being eco-friendly, by not buying the new 50mm f/1.8D with AF. I bought a used 50mm f/1.8 Series E Ai-S on eBay. Ok, ok. I would have liked the new one, but they are $135+, and the older version that is manual is just $25-30. You caught me. It’s so fun. I’m totally loving this shallow depth of field. My old lenses don’t have a very fast f-stop, so this is new and exciting for me. I am still learning how to use it though. It’s not hard, but there is no light meter, so you have to set the shutter speed based on a hand light meter or just trying it out. I’m just making educated guesses at the moment as to what the shutter speed should be for different lighting.
Gah. I hate that I am allergic to fake jewelry. I have this really cute sterling silver charm, but I have broken all of my nice chains. So I had to wear my nice charm on a fake chain the other day, and now my neck is all broken out with hives. It’s so itchy!
Lennon has a partially torn ACL, so we are keeping her on “bed rest.” Well… we are keeping her on as-much-rest-as-possible. How do you keep a herding, high-energy, sass-tastic dog from being active? So far, we have taken the following steps to ensure that her leg has a chance to heal. The keyword being “chance.”
1. Block off any access to stairs. She loves running up and down them as fast as possible.
2. Give her herbal stress relievers for dogs to try to calm her down a little.
3. Put an ace bandage on her whole leg, so it’s awkward to walk/run on.
4. Walk her outside to pee and don’t let go of her collar… or else she will chase birds.
Any other ideas?
