Creating blur to frame the subject – Shutter Speed #5
Choosing when to use a slow shutter speed to blur an image doesn’t always have to match the subject matter.
On the fourth Friday of the month during the summer streets are closed in Uptown Westerville for vendors, groups and associations, performers, and politicians to set up spaces to display their wares and attitudes. At all bu tone of the evening events is a dance group performing in the street in front of their studio.
The performers are all young, mostly girls and usually performing in front of their families and friends. I always make a pass around the dance perimeter to see what new images I can find.
This particular night I decided to shoot the crowd instead of the dancers. I had plenty of dancer photos and other than isolating on a particular dancer or individual performer, the dance photos weren’t very dynamic. It wasn’t that the performers aren’t talented. They are, for youngsters, but I generally don’t shoot the event for a particular person.
The camera was placed at street level balanced on the top of my boot. I wasn’t carrying my table top tripod this night as I hadn’t planned to stay late enough to need it.
ISO was set to 100 with aperture priority configured to work with f22. The auto exposure set the shutter speed to 1/20th of a second, long enough to create a blur in the dancers but short enough that their figures would be recognizable. I did shoot some frames at a slower shutter speed but the figures were so blurred they lost the shapes of the bodies and costumes.
Shooting with the Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 lens, the focus was set on the people across the street. My timing was nothing more than a guessing game as I wasn’t looking through the viewfinder and it was not possible to use the Live View function at the low angle.
Shot about 30 frames with this technique of which there were about five that made the first edit before choosing this as the final select.
Using a slow shutter speed made it possible to isolate the viewer’s attention on the crowd in the background instead of confusing the scene with sharp images of the dancers in the foreground. It would have been possible with a higher ISO and a different f-stop to have stopped the motion of the dancers. It would not have been as effective. Their sharp lines and shapes are not the main subject. They are framing devices to pull your attention to the crowd.
The technique is no different than shooting telephoto with a longer lens with a narrow depth of field so foreground and background objects around the subject are out of focus. Out of focus objects that move your attention to the primary subject is a old technique. Using a slow shutter speed to blur framing objects is a good technique to push attention to what you think is important.
