Intentional Blur with Melissa Richard
Hi friends! This is Melissa Richard here. I am a mother of two wonderful children, Emma (11 years old) and Isaak (6 years old). We live in a small town in Northern Alberta, Canada (Fort McMurray). I am a teacher and I teach first grade full time. Photography is my hobby, and passion. I love creating!I strive to capture"real"moments, raw emotion and movement. I am passionate about capturing the magic of childhood, letting light, shadows and mood guide me!
Most of the time when we are shooting, we are wanting to capture tack sharp and in focus images. While this is true for myself most of the time, I also love playing around with my shutter speed to create intentional blur. It can really enhance your image, and portray movement in a creative way.
Before I started experimenting with blur, I had captured some images that were out of focus, or what I like to call “happy accident”. I ended up loving them, and my love of blur began. Here are a couple of my “happy accidents”.
I am an open wide shooter. I always have my f-stop set at 1.4 or 1.8 (depending on what camera/lens I am using). I love the little slice of focus and the blurred background that shooting wide open creates. I love the artistic feel it can give to images. Here are a couple of my images I shot using an f-stop of 1.4 or 1.8.
Purposely blurring an image is a great technique to represent movement. To achieve this, you require a longer exposure time, by slowing your shutter speed. This will affect your lighting. With the longer exposure time, your camera will allow more light into your camera. You will need to narrow your f-stop. You will also need something to stabilize your camera by resting it on something like a table or by using a tripod. Otherwise, you risk blurring out everything in your frame.
In the next set of images, I narrowed down my f-stop and slowed my shutter speed. As you can see everything is in focus, except for the subject that is moving.
The next two images are self-portraits. I wanted to capture a little bit of movement/motion. I stayed completely still except for moving my hand in the first image. In the second image, I stayed still but threw my hair in front of my face. Adding blur to images can also add mystery or intrigue.
Another intentional blur technique in photography is panning. Panning is when you lock focus and follow the subject across your frame. Your subject is sharp, while the background is blurred. This is something you’ll need to practice and will require lots of trial and error. I like to set my focus to continuous when I am playing with panning. Here are a few of my panning shots.
A fun and creative way to capture blur is capturing light trails. In the next image, I sat my camera on a garbage can and slowed my shutter speed while narrowing my f-stop to get the light trails from moving vehicles.Try this will sparklers or glow sticks!
Did you know you could blur your images in post? In Photoshop there is a tilt-shift filter you can play around with to add blur: filter, blur, gallery, tilt shift. In the next two images, I applied the tilt shift filter in Photoshop on the image multiple times.
Lensbaby! Lensbaby lenses are amazing, they give selective focus and bokeh in images. They are a great tool to use to capture blur in your images in a unique and creative way. I own the Sol 45mm lens. It is pretty easy to use, once you get used o manually focusing. The next two images were captures using my Sol45.
Experiment with your shutter speed and have fun!