The Wonders of the Slow Shutter Photography: Light Painting

Just to introduce you guys with the creative shots slow shutter can produce, i'll present you with a technique call light painting. 
Following images are shot under created lights.

F-22, Shutter Speed: 245/10 second

F-3.5, Shutter Speed: 30 second

Photos Credit: Yash Choksi (fromthe80s via deviantart) 

Similarly images can be shot in lights presented in the environment naturally.  

This image is beautifully captured by the light of fire. 

I hope you guys have now a clear idea of how anyone of you can be creative with slow shutter. In further posts we will definitely share with you the techniques to easily produce these effects in your everyday captures.

The Wonders of Slow Shutter Photography: Motion Blur

To technically mention it,the three popular creative techniques regarding slow shutter are Water Blur, Motion Blur and Light Painting.

Today i'm here with some examples regarding motion blur. The way a fast shutter gives perfection to images by freezing movements, it can also embellish their beauty by capturing the picture in motion, called as motion blur.

Comparing Frozen Motion with Motion Blur

1. Sprinting Leopard

Caught in fast shutter speed  (Above) and in slow shutter speed (Down)

2. Sprinting Horses

 Caught in fast shutter speed (Above) and slow shutter speed (Down)

3. A Dancer

Caught in fast shutter speed (Above) and slow shutter speed (Down)

4. A Flying Bird

Caught in fast shutter speed (Above) and slow shutter speed (Down)

The Wonders of Slow Shutter Photography: Water Blur

I recently heard a photographer expressing his wonder why in the world do they provide a slow shutter speed on a camera? Who wants a blurred picture?
Do you wonder the same?
Well I for that reason decided to unravel the wonders of slow shutter photography to you today. I'll share some beautiful examples of similar situations and how the speed of shutter has completely changed the perspective and beauty both side of images.

See how the water is played into photography- and the Water Blur! 

Sea Waves

Above: Fast Shutter Speed
Down Slow Shutter Speed

Water Splash and Human 

Above: Fast Shutter Speed
Down Slow Shutter Speed

To see how slow shutter speed embellish the perspective of moving subjects, Check The Wonders of Slow Shutter Photography: Motion Blur. 

How Shutter Speed Affects Exposure?

Having gone through the basic introduction on shutter speed, let us today get to know its impact on overall exposure. 

Shutter speed options on your camera will almost be doubled or as you change your settings.  Remember this point, because aperture also doubles the light entering the lens. So it goes like this: when you increase the shutter speed by one stop/measure but decrease the aperture by one stop too, you are back at the same exposure level. The key is to remember exposure is built by combination of three elements, so choose the shutter speed that lets just the right amount of light in, or (if you are being creative with slow speed) gives the desired blur to the image, rest the balance the exposure with the aperture and ISO settings.  We’ll go into more detail on this subject in further posts.

Examples Where to use Fast Shutter Speed:

What is Shutter Speed?

Shutter speed is one of the three components of Exposure triangle, which determines how god your image turns out. We have already discussed Aperture in ‘What is Aperture?’ and ‘Depth of Field and Aperture’. ISO will be discussed in future posts.

Shutter speed is, in most simple terms, the amount of time the shutter of lens remains open.

Right before the image sensor in your camera, there is the flap called shutter. When you take a picture it snaps open and shuts to capture the light and create the image. The longer period it stays open, the slow the shutter speed. The quickest it shuts back, the faster the shutter speed.

Measuring Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is measured in seconds, or usually fractions of seconds. The larger the denominator, faster the shutter speed. As the denominator gets smaller, the shutter speed gets slower. For Example 1/1000 is faster than 1/60.

Usually, a speed faster than 1/60 is used. Any speed lower than 1/60 is very difficult to capture without getting a camera shake. A camera shake will then result in blurred or fizzy photo. Try to avoid camera shake. If you are shooting at or slower than 1/60, you must use tripod or something else to stabilize your image. 

Points to Remember:

• Slow Shutter Speed (Big denominator): More lights enter the camera, Motion blurs
• Fast Shutter Speed (small den.): Less light enters, Motion captured/camera shake avoided

Playing around with Aperture Sizes

Photography is always a pleasure...and those of you who feel about this endeavor as passionately as me, will surely relate to the hours of walking, exploring, peeking around journey with your camera. Today i thought to share just a few clicks, through many years and many cameras, that were a result of various trip of above nature. I selected these to give you an idea how you cam also be creative with your aperture. Play with your camera, try new things- if you have the knack, you'll create a unique style of yours, plus an irreplaceable joy.

I arranged the shots in ascending aperture sizes. You may note the difference, and yet how sometime the difference in shutter speed has balanced the aperture. Some pictures need a lot of improvement, but i deliberately displayed them in order to let the impact of these changes sink in. Enjoy! 

   f/1, 1/321s

                 f/2.2, 1/708s

   f/2.5, 1/100s

    f/2.4, 1/174s

   f/2.8, 1/3200s

                 f/3.2, 1/250s

   f/3.5, 1/640s

    f/3.8, 1/10s

   f/4, 1/512s

     f/4, 1/60s

 f/4.5, 1/125s

   f/5, 1/80s

   f/5.6, 1/250

f/6.3, 1/117s

f/7.1, 1/80s

f/8, 1/90s

f/10, 1/15s

 f/10, 1/640s

Exposure Triangle and Aperture- An Illustration

I recently came across two extensive and easy to understand figures/ images that will not only round up our two previous topics, before i start with the next, but they will also help you get more clear idea and revision of what we have been learning in the past.

This image tells explicitly how the three elements ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture contributes in Exposure Triangle, that i went through in my post ''Exposure Triangle: The key to unlock your control over photography''.

The following image illustrates the effect of change in aperture size and how it affects other elements like depth of field. For reference, we discussed these topics in past in two different posts: What is Aperture? and Depth of Field and Aperture.