Photography News Issue 29

Photography News Issue 29 absolutephoto.com

22 Camera Club of the Year IN ASSOCIATIONWITH

Masterclass: Movement David Noton The skill for this theme is to capture a sense of movement in your images. Canon ambassador David Noton is always looking to capture movement in his shots so we asked him for some top tips

David’s gear for capturing movement

GitzoGT3542XLS Tripod A good tripod is obviously crucial for anchoring the camera during long exposures. The Gitzo GT3542XLS tripod with Pro Geared head is steady and has stable carbon-fibre legs that can be extended higher than my head. A good tripod is a photographer’s best friend and probably the most important equipment we own.

CanonTC-80N3 timer A remote release allows you to operate the camera’s shutter without having to touch it. I use a Canon TC-80N3 Timer, which enables me to accurately time

factors, the speed of the subject, the direction of travel, the subject distance, the focal length and the amount of motion blur the photographer deems desirable. I believe there should be something in the frame that is sharp to offset the motion blur, but ultimately there are no rules. On a trip to the Philippines (see top left image), I wanted to photograph the overloaded tricycles, which are such a feature of life there. I spent all afternoon by the road side experimenting with panning as they trundled by. Eventually I determined that a shutter speed of 1/30sec with a smooth panning action was ideal. In practice it all comes down to trial and error, although experience always helps. Virtually any subject can benefit from a suggestion of movement Above A eucalyptus tree blowing in the wind expressed with a 30-second exposure in the Murchison River gorge at Ross Graham, Kalbarri National Park, Western Australia. Top left A panning shot using a 1/30sec exposure of an overloaded tricycle, Negros, Philippines. Bottom left Point Lobos, Big Sur Coast, California, USA. A panorama made from three frames. The four-second exposure suggests movement in the water without rendering it a sea of milk.

exposures longer than 30 seconds

using the camera’s Bulb mode setting.

Filters Neutral density filters are ideal to slow exposures. I use Lee Filters’ Little and Big Stoppers, and a 0.9 Neutral Density Pro Glass. The Little Stopper (approx 6x) and Big Stopper (approx 10x) enables me to achieve exposures long enough to express motion blur, from fractions of a second to many minutes long. A practical and inspirational guide from behind the lens of an internationally recognised landscape and travel photographer, Photography in the Raw examines the fundamentals of how to improve as a Photography in the Rawby David Noton

We live in a world that is on the move, constantly. We’re all on the move, rushing all too hastily towards our inevitable fate, and everything aroundus is too; people, plants, animals, the sea, the sky, even the landscape. Expressing that movement is a crucial skill for we photographers. Virtually any subject can benefit from a suggestion of movement; cityscapes, street scenes, wildlife, landscapes and even portraits. I find that I’m striving to suggest movement virtually every time I peer through the eyepiece. Last month I visited Western Australia, one aspect of the region that I hadn’t previously considered was the wind; it was our constant companion, maddeningly so at times. But by using a long exposure of 30 seconds and letting the swaying trees blur attractively

I transformed what would be a fairly boring static picture, into something far more evocative and characteristic of the region. To suggest movement, we have four options; keeping the camera steady and freezing motion with the use of a fast shutter speed, locking the camera off immobile on a tripod and letting the world bend, sway, lap, waft and drift all around, rotating the camera axis to follow a moving subject (see top left image) so it is rendered reasonably sharp against a streaky motion blur background, or physically tracking a moving subject so that both camera and subject are in motion in the same direction and at the same speed. All techniques have their uses but take considerable practice to master. Deciding what motion to express, how, and to what degree is all part

of the photographer’s creative thought process. Too little motion and the image can look static, too much and it all degenerates into a blurry mess. Recording motion blur is a technique that can be used with virtually any lens from fish-eye to super-telephoto, but in practice I tend to use medium to long lenses for panning. My advice for shooting movement is to experiment, and practise. With landscapes it’s all about deciding just how much motion you want to express. There is a current fad for example, for long exposure seascapes which render breaking waves as an ocean of milk, but I actually prefer to see some energy, texture and detail in the water surface. Panning is a key skill to learn, but just how slow a shutter speed to use will depend on several

photographer; how to read the light, be in the right place at the right time and make the most of a situation to produce the best picture possible.

davidnoton.com