Photo Tip Monday: Action Shots

Summarizing today's post: Photo tips for action shots, carrying your camera with you at all times, & enjoying your family. 

Happy Labor Day! I hope most of you have the day off from work today. But for those of you who don't, I feel your pain. I have worked many a Labor Day myself. I always used to say that I'm celebrating Labor Day by "laboring away". Not a very good joke for those of us who had to work.

shot at 75mm, ISO 200, f/5.6

It's Monday and that means I have a quick photo tip for you. It can be applied today even, especially if you are out with your family or friends on the water.

shot at 82mm, ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/1000 of a sec

We had the opportunity to "get wet" ourselves this weekend. Gavin loves the pool more than any child I believe I have ever seen. We probably won't have too many more opportunities to go swimming this year with Fall right around the corner. So when it was sunny and 90 on Saturday, the wife and I jumped on the chance to take Little Bud out for a quick dip.

So what's the photo tip? 

Ok. Have you ever seen water "frozen" in mid air in a photograph? You may have seen this in magazine pictures of boats speeding thru the water, youngins playing with water guns, or simply when splashing around in the pool (etc).

shot at 82mm, ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/1000 of a sec

It's a pretty cool effect, and I asked Gavin to stop playing on Saturday for just a moment help me demonstrate.

After setting my camera to properly expose for the sunny conditions, I asked him to send a couple of "splashes" my way. (He's a master at splashing...so I had to get my distance!)

Now in order to make the water "freeze" in mid air, I had to set my shutter speed to a very fast 1/1000th of a second. That's FAST. Although the same effect could have been achieved at any speed above...say...1/500th of a second, I wanted to make sure every drop of water stood absolutely still. They look like little ice crystals even...nice.

To make this happen, you have to be in very good light so you can achieve the high shutter speed. The brighter it is (like in full sun) the better, and you won't have any problems. And by coincidence, when you go swimming like this, it's nice and bright out most often. You can still get similar results in low light, but you have to make some adjustments. No time for that today, I want to keep this short. We'll save that for later.

Good job Gavin! Thanks for your help. 

Try playing around with your shutter speed today and see if you can freeze water in the middle of summer. Of course, don't forget your camera today as you go play!

Thanks for reading.

Brant

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