At Home with Tech

Softness in your photos can be a desirable effect if that’s your goal. Adding in a touch of blur around your main object can create a bit of a mystical look. Here’s what happened when I slowed down my camera’s shutter above The Rink at Rockefeller Center.

When snapping a photo, any motion in your frame has the potential to look blurry and ruin the shot. As the father of an active eleven-year-old boy who’s been moving about pretty quickly over the past decade, I’ve often been preoccupied with being able to freeze the moment in my photos and capturing any movement without blur.

Sometimes though, the blurred motion in a shot is the most important part to capture. The key is to isolate it without affecting the rest of the photo. Of course, to accomplish that, you just need to slow down your shutter speed and make sure your camera doesn’t move. (A tripod is especially handy in these moments.)

Here are a couple photographic opportunities I’ve run across with my Panasonic Lumix LX-10 that benefited from this approach.

Moving Water
The silky flow of rushing water in nature can be a prime candidate for this type of visual exercise.

Waterfall with motion blur (Zoar hiking trail in Connecticut)

The waterfall without motion blur

People Walking
The blur of a crowd of moving people can offer your camera a great opportunity to ‘see’ motion.

Grand Central Terminal with motion blur of all the rushing commuters

The same space without motion blur

The Art of Chasing Blur
Again, the key to success when allowing targeted blur in your shots is making sure that everything else is in focus. Otherwise, that dreamy feel you’re going for will instead look like you’ve fallen asleep behind your camera!

Enjoy finding the right blur to enhance your photos!