Motion is everywhere. Whether we like it or not the world is constantly moving around us, and we can either sit back and let it pass by, or we can take pictures of it. There are so many different ways that motion can be captured, mainly because there are soo many ways that things move. However, when it comes to the most popular and common modes of motion photography, Freeze and Blurred are the top two. In order to capture motion in these formats, it all boils down to the shutter speed on our cameras. A quick shutter speed of 1/1000, meaning 1/1000 of a second will freeze motion in its tracks with a nice clear crisp image. A slower shutter speed such as 1/5 or even 10, means a very slow speed, so the lens is open for a much longer amount of time. With these photos that I have taken myself I hope to share how simple it really is to capture motion with photography.

Waterfall-f/25-2-ISO 800-fl 24mm- BYUI Gardens 10/01/2019

Blurred motion is a little nit more tricky to get. For this first picture I found a nice waterfall in the Gardens on BYU-I campus. I set up right next to the falls and using my tripod was able to get this nice effect of the smooth water as it cascaded down. My shutter speed was set to 2 seconds, and that combined with my ISO set to 800 since it was about 5:30 or so in the evening. I liked how the water isn’t completely smooth, but has the nice ribbon effect to showcase this example of blurred motion.

Blurred Cars-f/9-shutter speed 5-ISO 200- fl 37mm-

This was one of my favorite pictures to take for this demonstration. In order to get the effect of the blurred lines from the cars as they passed by I set my shutter speed on my camera to 5, or a 5 second shutter. This allowed more light into the photo so that even though it was taken at night you can still see. I did have to boost up the ISO up quite a bit in order for it to be visible, but the blurred lines was really cool as they drove by the camera picked up on the red taillights and put them all together.

Backflip- f/7.1-1/1600-ISO 1600- fl 18mm- porter park

For this shot I recruited one of my friends who is a little bit more brave than I am. He loves to jump off swings, but not in the format most people follow. He likes to do backflips. In order to freeze him in the air I set my shutter speed to 1/1600. This allowed me to capture the moment he left the swing and grab him as he was in the air.

Yo-Yo-F/5-1/2500-ISO 400-FL 34mm-3pm-BYU-I Campus 9/30/2019

My personal opinion is that this picture turned out the best. Using the same model of my friend, as he yo-yo’d his way to happiness and glory I snapped this picture. Because the yo-yo was moving so quickly, my shutter speed was set to 1/2500 so that it would still be clear what I was trying to do. The picture turned out great, and after a little bit of editing this was the final result.

Well there you have it. With this simple illustration of these different examples of motion, I hope that you can see just how simple is really can be to freeze or blur motion. Now I know that these pictures are not the best in the world. However, as someone who is new to photography, I can say that finding the right setting on a camera or nailing the perfect moment to capture motion is a very rewarding process. Besides, with the world moving so quickly how else are we to capture these moments? Too bad we cant change the shutter speed on the lens of our minds….