June 27, 2010
Categories: Candid, Children, Photography
Capturing Action
Last weekend, I met up with a few of the girls from the photography board and their children.  It was a great opportunity to practice shooting active children, especially since this week’s TWOpeasinabucket’s Photography Course lesson is: Capturing Action (Week 8). 

There are a few things to remember when shooting on the go: 
  • Increase your shutter speed (they suggest keeping the shutter speed over 640 for outdoors and over 250 indoors). This also means you’ll need to have a low f/stop. No worries – I tend to shoot wide open anyways! Or, you can use a tripod to combat the blur…or use a flash to “stop” the action. 
  • Of course, you can always embrace the blur. The lesson this week suggests panning the camera (move it horizontally) with the subject to create movement in the picture. I still need practice. I’ll sometimes further enhance the blur in post-processing.
  • Go manual! I’ve been shooting manual for a while anyways, but for those of you that haven’t made the leap…shooting manual can give you a lot more control over your settings. So much so, that I’m finding that when I begin processing, that I don’t change my original settings very often. 
  • Play with silhouettes – and really, play with your metering. I really like using spot metering because I can be sure I’ve properly exposed my subject. However, if you meter off a bright sky, you can often create a beautiful silhouette.  
  • Consider using a macro or telephoto lens so you can observe from afar, but capture up close. Don’t worry so much about capturing the perfect shot, but document the interactions!
With that in mind, there are a number of challenges to choose from this week: 
  1. Use a fast shutter speed outdoors to photograph your moving subject (in my case, speedy children and bugs)
  2. Experiment with panning
  3. Embrace a little blur (indoors or outdoors)
  4. Take action – practice your skills at a sporting event
  5. Take a portrait of your pet-in-motion
So, how about a little show and tell? Meet Maddie and Nicholas.
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I have a lot more active shots from our session, but unfortunately, I haven’t connected with the mothers of the other children to obtain their permission for posting on the web. Either way, I hope you enjoyed the photos above. Have a great night and stay tuned for zoo photos later this week (or spread out over the course of the week).
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