Expressing movement in photography

27/12/08

Expressing movement in your photographs is a very effective way to make your images come to life and to excercize your creativity. There are many different techniques that can be used and the possibilities are endless.

The ‘Father of Motion pictures’ was an English born master photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830 – 1904) who developed a fast camera shutter and used other state-of-the-art techniques of his day to make the first photographs that show sequences of movement. He is probably most famous for his ‘passing horse’ series. In 1879, the Zoopraxiscope was developed by Muybridge, which projected a series of images in successive phases of movement obtained through the use of multiple cameras.

These days of the digital age, it is much easier to use different techniques to express movements. The obvious way to capture movement is probably either to ‘freeze’ your subject using a very high shutter speed (e.g. 1/1000 sec) or to create a blur with a slow shutter speed (e.g. 2 sec) and your camera mounted on a tripod.

However, other techniques can be used effectively. I have experimented with the zooming effect and multiple exposures. The results of these techniques can be a bit unpredictable so it is wise to take lots of images and experiment with different camera settings. However, interesting and unique results can be obtained.

Zooming effect is very easy to do and it can be a lot of fun. Set your camera on a longer exposure and while exposing rotate the zoom lens to create the zooming effect.

Multiple exposures is an old technique of exposing the same frame multiple times. Most digital SLR cameras offer this function. The same effect with more control over the result can be achieved by using a digital software. Digital photographs can be superimposed in e.g. Adobe Photoshop. Simply line two images over each other, adjust the opacity and experiment with different modes. For example the ‘multiply’ mode ‘adds’ the colours together rather than making the colours of either image pale and translucent.