Technique: Moving Vessels and Motion Blur

After yesterdays post about fishing in the Maldives, a friend asked me how I managed to create the motion blur in the image below. Given this is a pretty common question about this photo, I thought I would explain how it is done.

This technique is about understanding the relationship between a fast moving object (the vessel), the surroundings (the ocean) and the cameras shutter speed.

Let’s take the shutter speed. The lower the shutter speed – 1/30th, 1/15th, 1/8th…1 second, 2 second etc.. – the blurrier your image will be.

Now if we take a fast moving object such as the vessel, which was doing about 15-knots at the time of the photograph, and use a slow shutter speed, the wake from the vessel will appear blurry. Lower the shutter speed to a really slow setting – say 10 seconds – and the wake will have a distinct motion blur about it.

The question then becomes, how do you keep the deck in sharp focus at such long exposures?

You use a tripod.

As the vessel is clearly moving forward and gently rolling left to right, what you are trying to do is to ‘anchor’ your camera and tripod to the vessels movement. Without a tripod, you would never be able to hand hold the camera with a 15-second shutter speed and produce a sharp image of the vessel.

Place the camera on a tripod though and do everything you can to keep the tripod firmly pinned to the deck, and you may just get an image of the vessel in sharp focus. It typically takes a few shots to find out where the sweet spot is between a slow shutter speed, a creamy motion blur and a sharp vessel.

This technique is easiest when you are on a fast moving vessel. A faster moving vessel means you don’t need as low a shutter speed to get the motion blur effect. Though you still need a tripod, the shorter slow shutter speed means you have a greater chance of getting the deck in sharp focus.

The technical details for the photo above are: 15-seconds; f22; ISO 800

The image below is another example of the same technique.

This was a harder shot to produce as the ship was going much slower than the vessel in the photo above.

The technical details for the photo below are: 2-seconds; f22; ISO 100.

One of my favourite shots using this technique is at the following link:

Paul Souders photo of a tanker passing beneath the Golden Gate Bridge

Keep experimenting with slow shutter speeds and moving objects and remember: technique is beyond the tools.

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