Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Based on a lot of photography I see today, there seems to be an obsession with everything having to be absolutely, totally sharp. For a lot of images, doing just the opposite can produce some of the best, most intriguing images--especially when they're done intentionally. Here is but one example.

I was in the middle of a festive, colorful, and fun-filled Mexican celebration in Boulder, Colorado.There was a lot of dancing. This particular event was an Aztec dance. There was a lot of color and movement. I could have tried to freeze the action, in order to photograph the dancers. But, I decided to do just the opposite--to depict, not the dancers, but their dancing, and the movement of their dancing

You'll need a relatively slow shutter speed to get the blurred interpretation of any scene. 
The exact shutter speed depends on how fast the action or movements are, regardless of the subject. With my photo art, I don't ask, "What shutter speed should I use?" I ask, "What do I want this to look like?" In this case, I wanted it to be blurred, to reflect the movement of the event, not the event itself. My shutter speed for this image was around 1/60th of a second-- slow enough to give me that nice blur, but fast enough to give me some detail.

I call this piece, "Cara En Sueño," or "Face In A Dream."

So, go out and experiment photographing movement at different shutter speeds. 

For more samples of my photo art visit me at