I originally posted this over a year ago at The Idea Room.
In photography, a good photo is often determined by perfect sharpness. However, blurring the subject is a fun way to convey emotion. You can achieve this by slowing down your camera’s shutter speed (a.k.a. dragging the shutter). With a slowed down shutter, any movement will cause a blur in the final image. Make sure that something is stationary so that your photo will have both sharpness and blur. Generally, the entire photo blurred can often be considered just bad photography.
Here is an example from a recent photo shoot:
I’ll tell you the do’s and don’ts of this process.
1. Stabilize your camera. I didn’t have my tripod, so I got a stool and set my camera down. No matter how hard I try, I cannot hold still enough in a situation like this.
2. Instruct some of the party to hold very very still (mom and dad)
3. The other part of the group (kids) must move quickly to show that blur/movement.
4. Slow your shutter waaay down.
My settings for this particular shot: ISO 100 f /16 ss 1/5 sec
I set my ISO at 100 because, well, it was bright outside. Though we were in the shade, my test shot was SUPER bright. Because I slowed my shutter way down to 1/5 of a second, I had to compensate by cranking my f-stop/aperture way up to f/16 to darker it up.
Here is my first test shot:
Can you see it? It’s there–lots of white! My settings were just a guess: ISO 320 f/11 ss1.6 second
So then I fiddled a bit and got this: