Ready, set, action...

Have you ever tried something and it didn't turn out quite as you expected?   You know, the whole "A for effort" deal but really it's back to the drawing board.  Well that basically sums up the challenge for this week.  We set out to capture motion.  And we did, it just didn't turn out as pretty as we expected.  The same thing usually happens when I try to bake from-scratch cookies.  lol  So here are our motion pics, blurry and all. 

On a brighter note, Take Two is spending the upcoming weekend together.  Holla!  So we are going to take our failing grade for this week and do a little homework.  Stay tuned, round 2 of motion is in the works!!




Pictures below from Erin:

 

I set out this week wanting to capture a picture of a moving subject that had one of those awesome motion trails behind them.  All the tutorials told me to slow the shutter speed, and move my camera with the moving subject.  Ugh!  What I ended up with were horrifically blurry, completely unusable shots.  And it wasn't for a lack of trying!!  The first one above of my son at his basketball game was definitely the best of the worst.  At least in this picture you can tell that it is him dribbling the basketball and get a sense of the motion.  But ultimately, I don't think that it looks creative enough to warrant all the work I went through to get it.  So, I am going to stick with freezing the motion, at least for my sports shots.  I do still love the light motion pictures...like the ones that show blurred car lights in a city scene or light painting like they do in weddings.  Maybe I will have to try those next time :-)

Picture below by Vicki:

Remember last week when I wrote about the when the stars align?  I was thinking that would happen this particular afternoon.  Beautiful backdrop, running horses, sunset.  What could go wrong?   For starters I clearly need a few more hours (read days/months/years) of practicing with my new camera.  My buttons are in new places, the functionality on the new camera is twice that of my old.  I have a small idea of what I'm doing here people.  That perfect moment doesn't generally happen twice and well you just can't get lucky every time.  :)  But that's cool.  We will just try this little challenge again until we get it right! 

I was all over the place with my settings on this series of images.  The shot above was taken at 1/1000 sec, ISO 400, and f/4.0.  For me it is grainy and the lighting is horrible.  My subject is backlit thanks to the sunset.  My external flash (which I wasn't using) might have helped brighten up the shot, but chances of it providing enough light are slim.  You would basically need a football field light for that not something powered by 4 AA batteries.  You see the motion in their tails but that's about it.  These are 2 of my parent's horses.  Next time I am back home I'll try shooting them from the fence line you see in the background.  I'll lose the sunflare effect, which I personally like, but might have a better chance of actually being able to see the horses. 

Have suggestions?  Want to follow along?  Send us your comments!  We would love to hear from you.  hautopblog@gmail.com