Capturing Motion in Portraits with the Help of Boston Photography

We have all taken portraits where the image was too blurry due to motion and thought...darn that would have been great if I had been able to stop that motion in an in-focused "freeze frame".  Or maybe you have thought the opposite, you want to capture "motion".  Hopefully this will give you some great tips to do either.  I love capturing motion in both ways and once you understand the basics, you will too.

In quick terms, shutter speed can be controlled in your camera.  You can adjust this setting in Manual, Program, and Shutter Priority Modes in your DSLR camera. Check your manual to see how to adjust it.  Think of your lens as an eye...shutter speed is how long your leave your eyelid open to take in the light and scenes around us.  The longer you leave it open the more light you see (and more scenes are recorded), the shorter you leave it open is just a split moment in time recording.  Your camera may only say a round number on your display, but if it is just a number, i.e. 60 in the Shutter Speed section, then it is actually 1/60th of a second that your "eye" is open.  In this respects, the higher the number the shorter amount of time the "eye" is open, (1/1000th is shorter than 1/60th).  If your display shows the a number with " after it, that means you are greater than 1 second. (3" notated would mean that the "eye" would be open for 3 seconds.)

Take for instance, FIREWORKS.   I hope you saw our tip for photographing fireworks on our Facebook page posted on the 4th of July.  When photographing fireworks, I love to see way more than just specks of light.  I want to see the trail of the fireworks and even multiple fireworks let off at different times to create more interest.  So to do this, I want my shutter speed to be longer.  I can either change my shutter speed to a few seconds or I can use another setting in my camera called "Bulb".  This setting allows me to keep the "eye" open for as long as I want to as long as my finger is on the "trigger".  I used bulb settings to capture these last night.  These are considered slowing your shutter speed.

I applied the same concepts used with fireworks to capture this sparkler picture.  Hint: You have to write backwards!

If you want to freeze motion in its place and have your subject in focus, then you want a faster shutter speed.  To sucessfully get fast shutter speeds, it is best achieved in great lighting conditions, outside is best and this can often me more challenging indoors.  In this image I knew I wanted the parents, yes they are dancers, to be stopped in mid-air but remain in focus, so I captured this a 1/1600th of a second.

Also outdoors, I wanted to stop my son's swing in action, and I captured it at 1/1000th of a second.  Had I upped that more, I bet I could have gotten more of the sand in focus.  (BTW this is completely original no retouching)

A few months ago I photographed a Beachbody and Bodybuilding Contest.  One of the contestants (pictured here) had a routine that was awesomely high energy.  I knew that due to the lighting in this area (dark) and the speed of studio lighting this would be a challenge, but I was prepared and totally happy with the results! (BTW this is completely original no retouching)

So now that you know a few tricks of the trade, use up the rest of those sparklers you have laying around and try to do some slow shutter speed images.  FYI-you will need a tripod to capture these!