Lead em!!!
For those that like to smoke cigars, drink a bunch of whiskey and bird hunt, or for others that would rather kill a clay pigeon, you know what I mean by “leading it”. In other words, don’t shoot where they are, shoot where they’re going to be. Well, that same thinking applies to photography…how you say????
As I’ve demonstrated to my online class with the BPSOP, and in person with my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, the next time you’re out shooting action or anything that moves whether it be a person or object, try aiming your camera where your subject is going to be and not where it is when you start shooting. Try giving he, she, or it a destination; someplace to wind up. That way you’ll keep the viewer interested, and the more interested the viewer is the longer he’ll stick around. I don’t know about you, but that’s exactly what I want to happen.
As I say this, Ansel Adams once said, “There are no rules for good pictures, there are just good pictures. In other words, sometimes I do this and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I have the subject leaving the composition so it will imply ‘content’ outside the frame.
I digress:
Put your subject on the far right or far left and point your camera (a wide-angle would be the lens of choice) towards the horizon, or at the end of directional or converging lines. These types of lines are a perfect vehicle that can move the viewer around the frame.
Try different shutter speeds that will vary the amount of background blur. One of the best ways to achieve the feeling of speed is to get in a car (a convertible is best, but not mandatory) and follow along at the same rate of speed. Btw, you don’t need to go more than a few miles an hour to create this.
Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com and check out my new workshop schedule at the top of this blog.
JoeB
