Lessons

Lesson Info

Principles of Design: Motion

Literal motion pretty cool right pick a slow enough shutter speed uh this is andrew whiteford he's one of the guys obviously the arn tellem a guy he is can really for like a mile it doesn't matter for on a trail road whatever he's like you need to really just thie the good thing about his release is they're very consistent so notice he's not like bouncing up and down like this so all my job is as the photographer in this scene is to pan with him so as he's going by I'm panting with his speed rampant off shots you throw away a thousand you keep one and it's just a matter of getting that timing down as you pan through the shot and he just holds that really down the trail for as long as he can until there's a turn or something he's going to hit where he comes out of frame you know we figure out where starting and ending point isn't he just comes in there so we just keep doing this over and over and over again so we kind of get that shot yeah can you talk about the way you approach a pan s...

hot relative to when you're getting blurred motion on a stable shot? Is it just simply the reverse of what you're doing the other the other way yes well in the pan shot you can choose your shutter speed to pre pretty much whatever you want would want right, it's, the way to get, like the subject sharp there is, you have to pay in at the same consistent speed. Now, the longer the shutter speed, the longer these kind of streaks become between clicks, right, it's, like, so if if you choose to long of the shutter speed, then you're only going to get, like, three attempts. So you want to pick like a shutter speed, you know, I'm typically like a fifteenth of a second. I want to say of going through those like, but it's still slow ends, that he still has speed attached to him, so that gives me kind of a longer line. Now, when I'm showing motion where there are still things, I have to either be on a tripod in that scenario and the things moving, like the shop with the basketball players on vanished venice beach, right, tripod, one second exposure in one second day move around so that's tripod now, the other option, there is a rule to follow if you have you typically for hand holding something. If you choose a shutter speed that is equal to your focal length, or as close to equal to your folk elaine, nine times out of ten, if you have good body position that frame will be sharp so for instance if we do sixteen thirty five who were shooting at sixteen and we choose the slowest shutter speed we could potentially use handheld is going to be a fifteenth of a second okay seventy cents I mean it would be a sixteenth of the second but way have a fifteen so if you kind of use that guideline now the other kind of thrown in option to technology today is image stabilization and most lenses air two to four stops they kind of advertised so if you're at sixteen millimeters and you haven't image stabilize sixteen and thirty five four lines on your at sixteen well then you can go essentially four stops less and still get a sharp shot seventy cents so I use that I know that whatever my focal length is I picked that shutter speed and if I'm ok with so I know that I can handle something at that right is sixteenth but maybe my motion is moving faster at the at their level of the ping pong table thing going on well I'm holding at a fifteenth of the second but they're moving faster than a fifteenth of the second so even hand held them getting motion but I'm still getting sharp elements who are I have someplace to fall off does that help? Okay so this is a tripod scenario right cameras on a tripod cars air going by framing out the lights using the lights to light the element of the bicycle here I don't need to see all the logos and graphics of the bike but I want to see some elements right? We don't dispute the fact that we have silhouetted the tire pretty nicely and then the traffic going by is that extra piece in the puzzle kind of thing so that's the motion bike not emotion. Okay, I think I don't know if you can even see people but there's probably people in their move into same thing here camera on a tripod picked a shutter speed that allowed the branches and grass that air blowing in this kind of tumultuous winds to become blurry and then the trunks noticed the trunks are where I kind of lands because their tax sharp because I picked a shutter speed the's guys air moving. Yes, but if you pick a fast enough shutter speed, they become still right rodeo what's going on here if you follow the way the action progresses with the's bull riders you know that the really good ones there upper body is almost perfectly still the bulls doing this underneath, right? Ok, so if the bulls doing that, I can pick a shutter speed where I can hand hold and he his head if he's in good position holding that the poll, you know, holding them until the bull for an amount of time, he's trying to maintain that just letting that animal do whatever it does underneath him. He's just hanging on for the ride so I can pick a shutter speed where his hat head are fairly sharp look at his arm for glory bull blurry hands down here blurry hatch up. Okay, there's, some drool coming off the thing right here, off the ball. Here I mount the camera in my chest. So twenty four, one of five lens, thirty five millimeters. I'm kind of zooming in on it a little bit it's strapped to my chest. I've got the remote of my handlebars. You don't see my hands, so and I'm just picking a shutter speed again I'm pacing him pedaling as he pedals china keep up to get him to somewhat clarity so our eye has somewhere to rest I don't care what happens with the rest of france so it's, like you're in the chase, right, that makes you feel like you're riding with him, right? This is internal viewpoint for sure, right on the beach in iceland. Twelve o'clock high noon thirty second exposure how do we do it? I use a singer ray very nd filter, which is a neutral density filtered circular works like a polarizer I can pull stops of light out of my exposure to get a longer exposure in a scenario like this, the cool thing with this filter is polarized as well. And so I get the sheen off the wet black sand on the beach so really just becomes about what? My highlighted elements are here. Yes, for something like this, is it the same trial and error? You just crank it down, wait to see what it looks like. Try it again, you can kind of feel the rhythm of an incoming tide and, you know, you take a shot and I could kind of so click the shutter goes off, that tide comes in, okay, then that goes back out and I need that in and out to get all of that motion. So I picked the exposure that allows that to happen in different tied situations that could come in really fast and go out really fast. Right? So if you would, it would change the way it looks so it's, just a timing thing. Try it once and then I kind of get that fuel and then I'm like, ok need to go longer to make it happen. God okay, ping pong, here's here's the scenario is kind of setting up this is sixteen millimeter, probably right around the fifteenth of the second it may be a little bit slower or a little bit faster depending I don't know the actual numbers, but the goal is here hand holding so that all of this stuff tax sharp the motion of what's going on here then you let it happen. Okay, now implied motion can we imply it? If we can show it literally can we kind of figuratively shows something that's going on? Yeah, top of teton pass wife pulling skins, right? The action of that poll coming down on me going to clip the skin, all of those things, they're stopped. The action has stopped, but our mind puts together that there's something going on here even if you're not a skier. Okay, pretty long shutter speed too, because the snows blurry remember the shot with the iphone in the blood that's when this happened, so my wife and I married seventeen years in seventeen years, I have never photographed a crash because before the crash is over, I know there's going to be paying in blood and whatever and I dropped the camera and I, you know, go kind of to her to her needs or whatever in this time after that, you know, fifteen years this is in alaska she's like I'm going to ride this thing and I'm like you're insane, there is no like I walked from pretty much up here because there's a huge drop behind these bushes this thing is like a monster step down into a creek that's completely washed out with a solid twenty foot drop on the other side of all this stuff she's like I'm going to ride it it's ok and yeah didn't work out so good so this time after fifteen years the first time I ever actually shot from the point at which she started to crash to the point at which she pretty much missed hitting her head's square on that pointy rock right there by about a millimeter but there are other rocks here that kind of put a big hole in her leg and I get down there she's like doesn't say you know anything about the injuries is like did you get it fifteen years did you get I think yeah, I got it ok, good we're good and I look at her leg I'm like I think you need stitches she's like now we're fine so like seven butterfly bandages later you know we don't need stitches anyway, but so that is the climax moment, right? We don't need to know what's going to happen that's a crash because her balance is beyond the point of return here our minds make that connection yes so uh did you also zoom in on her on that I mean to show maybe her expression or no I didn't track you were I didn't the shot this was my composition it was sixteen millimeters I gave us some foreground rocks this creek actually watched the entire trail out down below so kind of screwed things up so I was just there I just kept going she's like don't stop shooting for once in your life please I'll be fine and I'm like as it happened I was like oh my god she's not fine she's gonna whack her head but so this is that moment like there's a this is the point where you could either change your weight and body position and change what's going on or things go way too fast and you're going over and that's what happened there is no control on the action so there was no time for me to move no time for me to change I just dropped the shutter uh so you know there's no turning back so looks like this dude still the a feather from that guy right? Because he's like look well he pulled the feather out of his own tail this guy just happen to be looking over there now I've got this visual connection right? You guys don't need to know that but you guys get kind of oh my god he stole the feather and that guy's like hey did give him the further back you know? So we get that story kind of progressing right so implied motion that that feather came from that guy even though it didn't he's trying to kick the door in I saw the graffiti I'm like, oh my god that's going to be my son in like three years and here's you know well, I'm just following your lead dad, I could just see it now right? Just following your lead so he's trying to kick in and you are never going to happen because actually yeah he's trying to kick the door in but it's never going to happen because the door actually opens out right? Because our hinges air on the outside I'm like ok, you might want to re examine that maybe you need school a little more school and truck driving down the road doesn't need to be in emotion teo for us to say it's in motion, right? Okay and then the other way we can illustrate motion with a photograph is weaken illustrate time tips so four minute exposure of stars we can never see this with the naked eye right? But we can record it with photographs and if we know we can do this, how cool would it be to illustrate adventure sports in a similar manner? If we know we have x amount of time to get a subject through a frame and it's after dark and he's going to create end quote, star trails what do we do how do we make this happen so about ten shots it took us to do this and I say we because yuri was their fish eye lens for the curves of the trail and the rider is wearing a head lamp and has a head lamp on his bike as well and then we get out the flash and we tried it a bunch of different ways flash on camera flash off camera the way it worked the way we finally got to work was yuri hitting the the flash tester button like ten times for the frame throughout so it's second exposure he's riding through the frame in the eight seconds we're popping it all over the place but the main pop was we decided this subject looked best right there that's the first pop then we pop the rest of it as he rides out of the frame notice he's ghosted the's air his shadow's as he rides by kind of a unique perspective and it probably took us an hour I would say to figure it out how did you get the light basically through the trailers that from the headlamp itself yeah yes oh ok so two things happening with the light that the writers were in here which is kind of cool one lighting up the trail right to the actual bull but self words mounted on the bike creating that trail effect through the frame as well. Ok now all you would see if we didn't add any flash to this is the line right zipping through the frame but because we popped a little bit of flash right there remember what I said flash doesn't care about shutter speed, right? So it was enough because it's pitch black out it was enough to give you that pretty solid image of him coming through the scene, so these light trails are his he's being stopped from the flash right there being stopped by the flash right there being stopped by the flash right there eight seconds and we figured that was it took it took a little bit we took thirty second exposures fifteen second etcetera, but that was the amount of time that it took him to go through here it was eight seconds, so try on there, we got it going and finally, you know way brought it all together that speed like didn't tells me like night blindness or anything did away with I don't think so I mean, his face is pretty lit up in there and I mean, he kept writing it so ok, so and this is kind of this's an exposure to different well, it's actually only one exposure, but so this kind of came out a mental kind of challenge for me I shot this memorial to this guy james and quinn he was a law student in albuquerque, new mexico and he was riding his bike ing and got hit by a car on the side of I think it's highway forty just outside of albuquerque and this is his memorial and I took the photos and obviously the base not moving in the in the final frame and there was something about it that it just didn't it didn't feel right and there's a kind of a piece of a banner here that was kind of blowing in the wind that was blurry when I took the original shot, so I brought the image into photo shop and did a motion blur filter on copied the original image layer and then did emotion blur in photo shop and then brushed a layer mask out to highlight thiss still details of the shot and the idea behind it was completely conceptual was that you know, this is a memorial to a guy who's reading his bike up until that point of his life is there a way to memorialize it other than it being a static still image? So it's kind of like the bike still going right? So for everything I tell you that I won't do at times there something that I just think needs to be done but the other side of it too is I don't try and sell it as something that it's not you know it's for me it's yes, this is a two layered, photoshopped file would love to have you use it. But if you have rules against that, then obviously, now here's here's, where we're at. But in that scenario, I think it makes it more powerful of an image than if we just shot the still.