Freeze Motion Photography – How to Capture Several Motions in one Image

//Freeze Motion Photography – How to Capture Several Motions in one Image

Working with publicity nowadays you have to be inventive. We are flooded with studio images and not much catch our attention anymore. Every image needs to be visually pleasing so people can stop and stare, if you catch their attention they will read what you have to say.

As a photographer, I love to create effects and make photos catchy. That’s how I learned to freeze motion in photography and use it commercially. Every single theme can be turned into something special, in my example I used gastronomy photography, this can be used in books about coffee or an article about the effects of coffee, but also to illustrate a blog that talks about breakfast.

Just use your imagination and you will see an infinite world of possibilities… Did you get hired to shoot a perfume commercial? You can freeze motion on that, a bottle falling and another splashing the liquid. If sports is your next job, join various moments of someone doing a backflip in one image. Do you love pets? Well, throw the ball and take multiple photos, the final image will be so much fun!

These images take a little bit of work but they are worth it. When buyers look at something that can add a fun touch to their work they are more willing to spend money than with a simple photo of an apple with white background.

Here you will learn how to freeze motions of more than one object at the same, I only used one cup of coffee but with a little bit of imagination and the help of Photoshop I turned it into three cups and a lot of coffee splashing.

 

Coffee cups - montage

Coffee cups – montage

 

So, what will you need? Besides your ideas, you will need a tripod (since the camera can’t move), if you don’t have one you can stabilize it anywhere that it won’t move. A little rock or something consistent to throw at your liquid so it will splash and Photoshop to blend all the images into one.

As I chose an outside scenario I did not use artificial lights, but if your natural light is low you will definitely need a flash or a strobe light. After you setting everything on your scenario you can start shooting, here’s how I did for this particular shot:

The shutter speed on my camera was high, 1/320s in my case, this is how I could freeze the motion and capture the coffee coming up. My aperture was f/1.8 since I needed more light due to the high speed.

After setting the technical details on the camera I put my cup on the first position and kept shooting while someone would throw my little rock on the beverage, after I was satisfied with the results I moved the cup to position two, without moving the camera or the focus and repeated the process. I did this three times, got several photos of a single cup on different positions and then moved to Photoshop.

While on Photoshop, I opened the three selected images of each position and then used the mask tool to make all the photos appear – see video below.

 

 

It is this simple and the results look great.

So, now you know how to freeze motion in photography and stand out from more basic images.

By |2017-03-24T04:37:18-08:00March 23rd, 2017|Categories: How-to Tips|1 Comment

About the Author:

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Born in Brazil, raised in Europe, I am a photographer of all things. Published for my animals adoption campaign, shot a few campaigns for clients that include Johnson&Johnson and just published an mini e-book. I aim to photograph all over the world.