Action Photography: Freeze The Moment
Action Photography: Freeze The Moment – There are few things more frustrating than reviewing your photos after a shoot… and finding that most of them turned out blurry.
You may blame yourself for not having the subject in focus. Or you think there is something wrong with your camera.
Action Photography: Freeze The Moment
When you get unintentional blur in a photo, most of the time it’s because the shutter speed was too slow to freeze the motion in the image.
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In this guide, I’ll show you what it takes to use a fast shutter speed and freeze motion in your photos, like the photo below taken at 1/6400 second.
If you’re shooting in AUTO mode, you’ll probably get this unintentional blur at some point. (More on that to come.)
The good news is that it’s easy to freeze motion in your photos once you know how (and you don’t even have to shoot in full manual mode.)
But before I dive into the simple technique, let’s start with the basics – what exactly is shutter speed?
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Shutter speed refers to the time it takes for the shutter to open, let light into the camera’s image sensor, then close again to complete the exposure.
Aperture and shutter speed are directly related. The larger the aperture, the more light enters the camera’s image sensor and the less time the shutter has to be open. The opposite is also true – with a small aperture, less light enters the image sensor and the shutter has to stay open longer.
You can think of aperture and shutter speed working together like filling a glass with tap water.
Open the faucet wide and it fills very quickly, or just open it and the water slowly trickles out to fill the glass.
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In the same way, opening the aperture wide (small f-stop number) floods the camera’s image sensor with light, quickly. Using a small aperture (larger f-stop) allows light to slowly trickle into the sensor, so you have to hold the shutter open longer.
When you leave the shutter open for a longer period of time, the image sensor has enough time to record any movement that happens in your frame.
But when you see a great shot of a fast-moving subject, like a frozen bird in flight, it’s the result of shooting at a fast shutter speed.
This is because AUTO mode does not take into account that the subject is moving and adjusts the shutter speed accordingly.
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That’s why I suggest that new photographers who want to experience frozen motion shoot in a semi-automatic mode called Shutter Priority.
So what shutter speed is fast enough to freeze motion? Well, that depends on how fast your subject is!
A kid running around the backyard is fast, so 1/250 is a good starting point to set the shutter speed for kids playing.
However, a football player running for the end zone is even faster. A hummingbird would make the football player look slow. A racing car would leave them all in the dust.
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So if you were to use a shutter speed of 1/250 to capture these subjects, you would end up with blurry photos.
Note that these shutter speeds are only suggestions – you may need to adjust your shutter speed slightly faster to freeze the action.
Now that you understand how to freeze motion, there’s a surefire way to tell if your images are perfectly sharp (without any motion blur).
If you notice blur, the shutter speed was too slow to completely freeze the subject of the image.
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Click the image, then press Control+”I” on a PC or Command+”I” on a Mac to display the image’s EXIF information. (This displays a pop-up showing the shutter speed, aperture, and ISO when the image was captured.)
Join me in my free training called Show Your Camera Who’s Boss and I’ll show you how to use the dials on your camera to freeze motion. When photographing children, we often struggle with motion freezing. Children, especially small ones, do not sit still. How do we do this? What setting should we pay attention to?
Have you taken a photo and when you review it, notice that there is motion blur? Maybe your subjects hand is blurry or their face isn’t as sharp as you’d like. This happens when you can’t freeze the movement you’re trying to capture in the image.
Freeze Motion uses your on-camera settings to stop motion occurring in your photo. As a photographer, you want your shutter speed and aperture to work together to create a sharp photo by freezing the movement of your subject.
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Like many photographers, I invested in a camera when my son was born so I could capture every milestone as he grew. Once he started crawling, I quickly discovered that I needed to learn how to photograph moving subjects.
Now my favorite pictures are the ones where he is running and jumping because it really captures his adventurous personality.
Similar to how a caricature highlights someone’s distinctive features and traits, motion capture using back button focus can have a similar effect. It adds another element to a photo and can be very challenging at first. Like anything else, practice helps improve the product. It’s incredibly rewarding when you capture that perfect moment!
I always try to shoot at 1/400 or higher to get a sharp shot, even if my subject isn’t moving a lot. I don’t have a steady hand with some of my heavier lenses, so a faster shutter speed helps compensate for that.
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If I have a lot of light to work with, I’ll push my shutter speed as far as I can without underexposing my subject too much. If my subject is jumping or spinning, my ideal shutter speed would be 1/1250 or faster.
Don’t be afraid to increase the ISO to get a faster shutter speed. When shooting moving subjects indoors, sometimes my ISO is up to 2000. Then I’ll reduce the amount of noise in Lightroom with the luminance slider. I personally don’t mind a little grain in my action shots.
Creating movement is easy when photographing children! Telling your subject to jump, run or spin allows them to have fun and keeps them engaged in the photo shoot. Count to three and then have your subject do their favorite action.
This gives some structure to the play session and allows you to be ready to pull the trigger. I take a lot of photos very quickly. I will do this a few times to make sure I got the shot.
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A fun tip to give your photos a little extra energy is to have the child jump and throw something in the air at the same time. This helps the baby to stretch upwards, which makes for interesting photos.
It’s easier to focus on the entire moving subject when using larger apertures. If I’m outside with lots of light, I’ll start around f3.5.
When I’m indoors and need more light, I’ll try to push my aperture closer to f2.8. Once you get really good at using fast shutter speeds, you can try using wider apertures to get that creamy bokeh while keeping a moving subject sharp.
The best thing about photography is that there is no right or wrong way to capture your subject. Much of photography is about interpretation. I never start and end a session with the same settings.
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I’ll take a few shots and then look at the viewfinder to determine if I like what I see. Then I will adjust accordingly. I’ll be the first to admit that not all of my “moving” images are in focus.
However, I take a lot of photos very quickly, which maximizes the chances of that inspired shot! For me, an image that successfully conveys energy and emotion always trumps a technically perfect photo.
Hi! I am Tara. Blessings in my life include a hilarious husband, a wild little boy, and a beautiful little girl! I live off coffee and love to travel. Photography is my daily journal. This is how I tell our story, how I love and how I practice gratitude. I love to capture light, energy and emotion in my photos. Instagram In the past, we’ve looked at all sorts of different ways shutter speeds can be used. We looked at super-fast and super-slow shutters, the power of motion in images, and the beauty, precision, and patience required behind those long exposures that show us what we otherwise wouldn’t be able to see with the naked eye.
Shutter speeds are the most important part of any photo. Second (depending on your intentions) to that all-important aperture, shutter speed determines the visual outcome of your image, and is the one characteristic of any camera that can drastically change results from one extreme to the other.
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This month, we’re not necessarily looking at the importance of shutter speed, but instead at one of those extremes – freeze frame.
We will often shoot at a high shutter speed to get a sharp shot. It is
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