In game theory, a zero-sum game is one in which one side’s gain is exactly balanced out by the other side’s loss. Regarding photography, the term works well to describe one problem with the ever-more-popular art of motion image photography, or pulling stills from very high-definition video. And in the video above, The Slanted Lens makes this point very well by testing the concept in a photo shoot using Canon’s 1D C. Read more…
For his project titled Motion, Brooklyn, New York-based photographer Bill Wadman shot portraits of dancers with a slow shutter speed in order to capture their movements through motion blur. The resulting photographs look like a strange fusion of photography and painting. Read more…
I was recently offered the opportunity to direct a filler piece by Filler Magazine that involved telling a beautiful love story through fashion and dance. I also shot a series of artistic still photographs in which I used shutter drag to add motion-blur to the images. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the shoot. Read more…
In October of 2011, the tech world went into a frenzy after Adobe showed off some crazy image deblurring research it’s working on. By calculating the camera movements that caused the blur in the first place, the algorithm is able to “reverse” the motion blur and sharpen the photo. If you’ve been impatiently waiting for the feature to show up in a new version of Photoshop, you might want to check out Blurity, a similar blur removal tool that’s already available. The software has been available to Windows users for a while now, but just recently launched for Mac OS X as well. Read more…
A new Nikon patent unearthed by Egami shows that the company has developed a new in-camera feature that assists in panning photographs. Tracking a moving subject with your camera and shooting a longer exposure shot creates photos that contain motion blur and a sense of action, but getting the subject perfectly sharp can be difficult. Nikon wants to use some fancy digital trickery to get around this problem. The feature snaps two photographs — one at a slower shutter speed and one at a faster one — and then selectively blends the images together. The subject subject in the fast shutter speed shot is extracted and used to replace the blurry one, producing an image that has a blurred background but sharp moving subject.
Metropolis is a project by photographer Martin Roemers that consists of long exposure photographs that show the bustle and chaos of large cities.
Specifically, I’m looking at the small stories of the street vendor, the commuter, the passer-by, the market stallholder and other pedestrians, who populate the street or are a part of the traffic. Despite the megacity and its mega-commotion, their environment still maintains a human dimension. I present this by photographing busy locations from above. Moreover, every photo has a long exposure time so that the big city’s vitality is shown through the movement of people and traffic while the image literally focuses on the small story in question. Every megacity is a theatre and every city has a different stage and different actors, but in the end every single one of them is trying to make its way in today’s modern society. [#]
The project was awarded 1st prize in the 2011 World Press Photo competition in the category “Daily Life”. Read more…
Last week we shared a sneak peek at some jaw-dropping image deblurring technology currently in development at Adobe. The video wasn’t the best quality and was captured from the audience, so we didn’t get to see the example images very clearly. Adobe has now released an official video of the demo, giving us a better glimpse at what the feature can do. Read more…
Here’s a fun photo project you can do with any small kid (preferably not a stranger’s): spinning shots. All you have to do is set the self timer on your camera to automatically take a shot while it’s hanging around your neck. While it’s counting down, grab the child by the arms and spin them around. If luck is on your side, the photograph will show a clear subject, happy face, and motion-blurred background. Read more…
Flickr user Céline Ramoni has a beautiful set of photographs shot from the Yurikamome rail line connecting the cities of Shimbashi and Toyosu in Japan. The exposure times aren’t too long (they’re all less than a second), but the speed of the train creates plenty of motion blur — even in daytime. Read more…
Runners in broad daylight aren’t often captured as motion blurs, but that’s exactly how Flickr user Justin (just big feet) shot the London Marathon. Just stick a neutral density filter or two onto your lens to restrict the amount of light entering your camera, allowing you to shoot at slower shutter speeds. Read more…
