Practical Photography

I used manual mode on the camera and had the focus set to manual also. This is a good example of slow-shutter speed. In order to achieve the bus in the background looking blurry like it is, I left the shutter open for ¼ of a second. This effect creates as sense of motion and adds another dimension compared with just a standard image. The people you can see in the image were stationary, hence them being in focus. For the best results with this type of image, you really need a tripod. I did my best to hold the camera as still as I could but the image is not as crisp as I would have liked, which would as I said, only be achievable using a tripod. When leaving the shutter open for such a long time, you have to compensate by reducing the ISO and closing the aperture as much as possible, otherwise too much light will be let in and the image will look over exposed.

The picture was taken in a bit of a rush and as a result I’m not very happy with the composition. I don’t like the placement of the crossing button in the image, it looks ugly and doesn’t suit the image. I think for maximum impact and for the image to tell more of a story, it would have been great if the bus was speeding past and this was a bus stop sign. Then I could have instructed the models, to pull an unhappy looking face. That would have been more interesting and would have had more meaning, making it easier for the viewer of the image to relate to. At the moment the image is a bit random. I do however, think it adequately demonstrates the effect of leaving the shutter open.

Again I used full manual, on both the focus and the camera setting. Contrary to the above image I had the shutter set at an extremely high speed. I set it to 1/1000 of a second. With the shutter set at such a high speed it captures and freezes the moment, clearly capturing all of the aspects of the image. The water splashing in this image is a great example of this; as we can clearly see all of the droplets and fragments of water splashing upwards out of the puddle.

Although the main focus of this image was not necessarily on the composition, but more as an image to demonstrate the technique of a very fast shutter, I think that it actually looks quite cool. The cone and the catalyst of the momentum in the image is over to the left hand side, and the whole of the splash that it is creating, fits nicely into the frame, and it hasn’t even been cropped or altered in Photoshop. It is a bit dark and could do with perhaps having the brightness adjusted a little.

The way that the splash is forming a dam like curvature, so uniformly with the peaks of the water just starting to break looks really great and I think is mostly down to the way the cone has been throne in and slid through the puddle, but also down to good timing and a bit of luck. To the left hand side of the image we can see that the water has started to break off into what look like shards of glass or ice. That is really what this type of photography is all about, capturing that moment and stopping any motion in the image. If you used a slower shutter for this image it would have just been blurry and out of focus.

I saw this tree and instantly found it interesting. I like the deep, wrinkle-like groves in the bark and the green algae that has started to grow on the far side of the tree. To achieve the nice crisp and focused tree, but the blurry background I had it set on F.stop 4.6. This was as wide as the lens would allow. Despite the lens being relatively slow speed, I have still managed to achieve the desired results. I wanted the tree to be really detailed and clearly in focus, but the background to be totally unclear and blurred as it is.