…or was that Stills in Motion …

Before we start, we want to thank all those who joined us during the past 11 weeks and some 11,000 miles on the road. We had great groups, and participants laughed until their cheeks and bellies hurt — and so did ours — while making some wonderful photographs. They learned some of the techniques illustrated below.

Open up most photo magazines these days, and usually all you see is crystal-sharp (and often very boring), same-old, grand landscapes. But how do we evoke motion in a land that is not static?

There are several approaches.

The first, and perhaps most common, is to slow down water to give it that milky effect.

In New England recently, I stood in the stream to get the shot I wanted of the waterfall, and with a slow shutter, I captured the feathery exit of the water.

On the Outer Banks, where we return in a week, Arnie photographed a lone visitor standing in the surf, the water swirling around her feet.

On many a crisp autumn morning in Colorado, the fog rises out of the valleys. The wispy patches of fog, along with the birds, their wings at different angles, created a sense of time passing and changing. Here, it is not a slow shutter speed, rather the choice of subject matter and timing that is critical.

In the early morning on the coast of Maine, fishermen skull or paddle their dinghies out to the fishing boats. Here, Arnie allowed the oar, wake, and even passenger in the stern to go soft to evoke a sense of motion.

Back in New England, it rained one afternoon. I was taken by the various circles formed by the drops. Although shot with a fast shutter speed, I used the the patterns in concert with selective focus as a way of expressing the motion, a lone leaf suspended for a moment on the cross hatch of circles.

For this take on motion, Arnie stopped almost every droplet of a Charleston fountain, yet captured the young lady in mid-air as she jumped onto the tiles below. He gave a feeling of the energy of the water as well as the carefree spirit of the girl.

So, experiment with different ways of presenting motion. See what you can do!

For more information on our workshops, go to Barefoot Contessa Photo Adventures.

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