Showing Motion in a Still Photograph

Or getting lucky in a fast shot

Hello. My first post here. Partially I’m just playing with the new tools and partially I want to talk about getting a good motion shot.

This is a picture that I took on October 4, 2020 at Orlando Wetlands Park just east of Orlando, FL.

It’s a picture of a red-winged blackbird. It’s a male, but probably not a breeding male. Breeding males have shiny black feathers as opposed to the black / brown of this little guy. The females are completely brown and have no or just the slightest red spot. So I’m guessing this is a young male. 

But what I wanted to talk about is the picture. Notice how it captures a sense of movement even though it’s a still picture. You can almost feel the urgency of his forward momentum.

Here are some camera settings for this shot:

Camera model: Nikon 3400

The Nikon 3400 was first launched in 2016. It’s an entry level Digital Single Lens Reflex camera. It’s not a new model and it doesn’t have a lot of the connectivity options of newer cameras, but it has worked for me well for several years. A relatively inexpensive workhorse camera.

F-stop f/5.6

The f-stop is how big the aperture or the ‘hole’ that lets light in the camera. The smaller the number the larger the aperture. This is how the depth of field is controlled; the larger the aperture the smaller the depth of field. For this shot I wanted a depth of field that would blur the trees in the background but large enough to give a good chance of getting a clear picture of the bird. F/5.6 is smaller than I would have used to get a stationery shot but still large enough to blur the background. A compromise.  

Exposure time: 1/1000 second

There are basically 2 ways to show motion in a still shot. One is to opt for a long exposure showing the subject blurred by the motion. But I chose a very fast exposure to make the bird seem hanging in midair against a blurred background. This shows fine details of the bird contrasting with the lack of detail in the background created by the f-stop. 

Another factor that figures into the shot is the lighting. It was 1:37 pm on a cloudy day with a very diffused light coming through the clouds. In my experience that’s the best time to get good animal shots. Some photographers really like the “golden hour” — the hour just after sunrise and the hour before sunset. But I’ve never gotten lots of good shots then mostly because the photographer has to be directly between the target and the sun. Frequently that’s just not possible. There is much more time in middays with cloudy skies to get the shot.

Overall the picture came out very well. You can just imagine the little guy caught in mid flap using his aerodynamic body to speed through the air.

Thanks for stopping by.

In this blog I’ll be talking about nature, nature photography, natural places (especially in Central Florida) and whatever else catches my eye. Thanks for coming by.