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!
- Use a fast shutter speed outdoors to photograph your moving subject (in my case, speedy children and bugs)
- Experiment with panning
- Embrace a little blur (indoors or outdoors)
- Take action – practice your skills at a sporting event
- Take a portrait of your pet-in-motion
So, how about a little show and tell? Meet Maddie and Nicholas.
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).
