The Motion Picture
It’s been ages since I published anything to here and with the competition for the month of May coming to a close I realise that I haven’t written anything about April’s submission or why I chose the picture I did.
The theme selected at random was “In Motion” and it proved to be a massive challenge for almost everyone who attempted it. How do you take a picture of something that conveys motion, again lightpainting was an idea, followed by traffic or motorsport. I really struggled.
Being a parent of two though, I thought that there would be ample opportunity to snap a picture of either of them in motion, on the trampoline, running around or taking part in a sport etc…
Splash
The first idea came about when I took my kids and one of their friends to the local swimming baths. That’s my local swimming baths, not yours, unless you live in Shrewsbury that is.
Now I know what you’re all thinking, “a camera in a public swimming baths, surely that’s not allowed?” Well, I’ve been challenged by a parent in the past while my littluns were at a swimming party so this time I asked the duty manager and he gave me a form to complete with all the required details on. This I duly did and had the little slip as proof of my permission. The conditions were that I only take photos of my own offspring with now other in the frame at all. At the end I was to show the manager my camera and the photos held within it.
It’s bloody difficult taking pictures in the swimming baths. I was in the spectator area and to ge a decent photo I had to use my 70-300mm zoom and the issues with this having a small aperture meant many blurred and unusable photos. I took some of my boy going off a diving board and diving in from the side but all were unsatisfactory.
To abide by the rules I wasn’t taking photos of my daughters friend and as they were together all the time it meant I had no pictures of her either. Not only that but the minute you think you’ve got a decent picture in the making, another kid gets in the background. How thoughtless.
This is the best photo that I had that spoke of motion and it’s my son hitting the water from a diving board. I think if I was able to use a better quality zoom lens and be at poolside level it would improve things a lot.
At the end of the swim session I persuaded the kids to get ready and go for an Ice-cream while I spoke to the manager of the facility and put his mind at ease. I commended one of his lifeguards too who had challenged me about using the camera, who then accepted the permission slip as he should have done. Very professional!
A Space Odyssey
The topic of things in motion had my mind working and when I heard that the International Space Station was due to flyover I figured that a good light trail of this would be cool. It wasn’t really, The moon was out and filling the sky with bright white light reflected from the heart of our solar system. I didn’t spend much time on this so was not deflated too much, but I still marvel at the thought that there is a capsule containing fellow members of our race up that high that we can see from earth.
This shows the problem I had, the moon isn’t far from the path of the ISS and as a result I had trouble gathering the other light into my Sigma 10-20mm without overpowering the picture with the light of our lunar satellite. I used my 10-20 to get a load of the sky in the same picture but it wasn’t to be the photo I was after.
The Birds
A brief stint on the railway bridge at work a week later trying to snap a shot of the gulls that hover over the factory didn’t produce many results either. The sky was too cloudy and I had to over expose a bit to get the gulls colours correct. Also, what didn’t help was that the photos from this exploit were static birds caught on camera, not looking remotely like they were in motion. Obviously they were in motion but you know what I mean.
The Town
That weekend saw my boy’s birthday and a trip to the Greenhous Meadow, home of the legendary Shrewsbury Town FC for their last game of the season against Portsmouth. Again the camera joined us on the lads day out. The best photo of this trip turned out to be a nice shot of the Portsmouth keeper Simon Eastwood as he took a goal kick during their 3-2 defeat.
There’s a bit of blurring and it tells of motion but I think the picture is too dark and playing with it wasn’t any help at all.
Man On Wire
My selection for the month of April’s task “In Motion” was decided during a bit of time playing at the local park on the equipment. The kids were playing at getting over the course of obstacles in a short a time as possible and the final obstacle is the zip line. There’s plenty of motion on this so I strapped on my nifty fifty prime lens and did a little bit of panning to get the desired effect. It came out with no assistance from Photoshop or Lightroom and I thought it conveyed motion in a way that if a viewer was to look at it they might think that the topic was motion. This, in my opinion, is how I look at topics and try and ascertain if the subject is explained by the contents of the photo.
This photo was taken on my Canon 50mm Prime at f/16 and a shutter speed of 1/15 sec to get the slight motion blur.
So goes another month, there were lots of good photos in the mix this month and the winners were mentioned in a blog post here on the CAT PS website, along with how we were prepared for the May challenge of a photo using the brief, “shallow depth of field”
See you in the next post!!
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