Assignment – April 24, 2018 – Capturing Action and Motion Photography

Understanding how to use the camera shutter to your advantage is an essential technical skill you will need as a photographer. If you look at many photographers websites, you will see that they will use phrases like “A moment in time,” or “Freeze a moment of time.” They are talking about capturing a moment in time and how you use your shutter speed can help tell a story.

We have talked about helicopters and how to photograph a helicopter, so it doesn’t look like it’s falling out of the sky. If you photograph the blades of a helicopter too fast (1/250 or faster), then you will freeze the blades, and the helicopter will look like it’s falling out of the sky. If you photograph the blades too slow (1/60 or slower) than you will completely blur the blades making it look like odd to the viewer’s eyes. If you photograph the blades around 1/125, you will catch them moving with a slight blur on the edges. This helps the person viewing your image see that the helicopter is flying.

For this assignment, you will work on your skills to capture action and motion. This is more difficult than it sounds because you will have to identify the scene, aperture, exposure ISO, focus and make a decision on what shutter speed you want to use to capture the assigned images.

1. Please read the following article from Nikon about capturing action and motion photography: Capturing or Freezing Motion in Photos
2. Take photos outside that capture ACTION SHARP.
   1. Capture the moment by using shutter priority mode and autofocus AI Servo mode.
   2. Make sure your shutter speed is 1/60 of a second or more for more blur.
   3. Use a tripod to make sure stationary objects are not blurred…i.e., the building in the background.
   4. Take a series of pictures with someone dropping an object and try to capture that object without blur.
   5. Take the second series of pictures with someone dropping the same object and try to capture the object with motion blur so you can see it falling.
   6. Ingest your images into Lightroom and select two images, one showing blur and one showing action sharp non-blur.
3. Create a new blog post named Capturing Action or motion photography.
4. Write two paragraphs stating what you learned from the article and how you put your knowledge into action.
5. Upload your edited images make sure you include the ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed, and Camera Mode. You can use the caption in Edublogs, or you can add using Photoshop.
6. Find one image online showing action sharp and a second image that shows motion blur. In the caption are guess the shutter speed, F/Stop and what lens was used.