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  • Dvir Barkay

Guide to Motion Blur and Panning in Photography


I recently got the chance to write about one of my favorite photographic techniques: Motion Blur and Panning with Motion Blur. It's a wonderful way to add a sense of movement to the inherently stagnant medium which we use to capture the world in stills photography. I go over both techniques and if you have any questions please post them below.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

"In photography, conveying motion is one of the most challenging tasks due to the very nature of a stills photograph. You are essentially freezing a specific moment in time rather than capturing the whole of the sequence from which this moment originates. When set to fast shutter speeds, our cameras can break down whole events into precise frames that tell a story in hundredths and thousands of a second. Nowhere are fast shutter speeds more common than in the fields of sport and wildlife photography, where using a quick shutter speed is almost a prerequisite in the hopes of freezing the subject at the perfect moment when the action peaks.The issue with telling a story in hundredths and thousands of a second is that, at such fast shutter speeds, the subject is perfectly frozen in place – so the image loses all sense of movement. To counter this, a photographer can employ two techniques known as motion blur and panning with motion blur.

“Motion blur” refers to the apparent streaking of moving objects in a photograph that occurs when part of the image being recorded changes during the exposure. This streaking may occur on an object that is moving within in the frame or because of user-induced camera shake. The longer the shutter speed, the more apparent the motion blur. "

For the full article you can go HERE.


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