Adding Action to Portraits

 

As a grandfather with a camera, I’m very often snapping away when the grandchildren are nearby. So it shouldn’t be surprising that I have hundreds (maybe thousands) of photos of these kids in my collection.

Yesterday, three of them were out playing in our backyard. Here’s a few snapshots that I took. I’m a big fan of trying to incorporate action into these portraits. You be the judge of whether the action helps to make the picture.

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My favorites are the candids. These are shots where the subject is totally unaware. When they’re preoccupied with having a fun experience, they may not know that you’re “spying” with your camera.
Obviously this is not a candid. Eden knows that I’m taking her photo	But here she is unaware that I’m snapping away
When it’s not possible to be totally candid you can use a semi-posed action shot. The action helps to avoid a face that’s preoccupied with the picturetaker.
This full length portrait of Logan shows little motion	Here the angle of the shot emphasizes his action on the slide
With a little patience, you can turn a static shot into a live action photo. A few minutes after taking the photo on the left below, she was being doing calisthenics – making the photo on the right much more exciting.
Here Ezra is clutching the wooden post that’s supporting the swing set	Here she’s showing me the agility that I wish I could still muster.

 

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While each of the left-hand photos are OK, I’ve learned that adding a little action to the mix can turn my snapshots into real “keepers”.

Do you agree?

 

 

Written by Arnie Lee

 

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Continuous Shooting

Most digital SLR and many point-and-shoots have a feature called continuous shooting that lets you capture several photos in a very short period of time. This is also referred to burst mode. So at the soccer game, by keeping the shutter depressed you can capture your star player as she runs towards the action, swivels her leg into launch position behind her, quickly drives her kicking shoe forward and finally strikes the ball.

On a recent outing, I caught one of our future diving stars practicing at the pool. With the camera set to take continuous photos, I quickly fired off nine shots as she made her big leap into the water.

Pressing the shutter was the easy part.

After reviewing the photos, I wanted to be able to show the young girl’s diving exploits to others. One method is to make a composite of the action. Here’s a miniature composite:

Making a larger composite makes it easier to see the detail of each frame. However, the time and expense may cause you search for an alternative if you’re planning to make many such composites.

Another way to show these is to convert the nine individual frames into a movie. One free and easy way to do this is to use Picasa 3*. After starting Picasa, I added the nine photos to my library. Next I highlighted these nine frames and clicked on the Movie icon (towards the bottom of the screen).

For Transition Style, I chose Disolve. For Slide Duration, I chose 1.0 second. You can choose a longer time which lets you study each frame more, but I prefer the shorter duration which makes the action seem to flow more naturally. For Overlap, I chose 100%. For the diving action, this setting seems to provide the best effect. Then I click on the Create Movie button. This converts the 9 individual frames into a short movie.

In just a few seconds, Picasa turns the images into a short movie with which you can enjoy the action with others. Click here to see the movie.

Yes, you can have a fun using the camera’s continuous shooting mode. But sharing the action with the world makes the fun last much longer.

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* Picasa is available for the PC and Mac by free download from Google.

Once again, patience counts

Sometimes the only way to catch the perfect photo is to take a lot of them until you achieve the desired result. To retain the feeling of motion, I used a slow shutter speed (1/60th of a second). My goal was to “freeze” the young girl’s face, yet convey movement. After taking about twenty photos, I finally snapped one that I liked by being persistent (and patient).
I took about twenty photos similar to this one using a relatively slow shutter speed. While it captures the motion of the young girl, overall the photo is too blurred.	Here I snapped while the young girl is at the top of her swing where her velocity is zero. By waiting for this exact moment, I’ve been able to stop most of the motion.

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