Projecting Motion Into A Photo

There is this new toy known as the flying kite. It can be flown using a remote control. The flying kite is decorated with a lot of colored lights. It looks especially stunning and beautiful when you fly it against the dark sky.

Maybe you are wondering why I am talking about the flying kite. Well, the flying kite accidentally ended in one of my photos taken during a particular night shoot. Yes, I was angry because it had spoilt my photo. I was snapping the fireworks display when this flying kite appeared out of nowhere and flowed into the scene that was being captured.

After my anger was gone, I examined the photo again. I found that there is a ‘trailing blurred effect’ of the flying kite. This effect gives an impression that the flying kite is in flying motion.

You can conduct a simple experiment to see the effect for yourself. Firstly, find a road where there is a lot of traffic during the night. Secondly, set up your camera on a tripod at the side of road to capture the vehicles that are passing by the road. Thirdly, snap a number of photos on the vehicles that are passing by the road. Please ensure you are at a safe location while doing the experiment. You may also conduct the experiment during day instead of the night. But the ‘trailing blurred effect’ is more apparent during the night shoot.

Examine the photos taken from the experiment. You will notice that there is a ‘trailing blurred effect’ for the vehicles that have passed by that road. The reason behind the ‘trailing blurred effect’ is because the camera takes a while to capture a photo. Let say the camera takes about 1 second to capture the photo. At 0.1th second, the vehicle is at point A. At 0.2th second, the vehicle has moved from point A to point B. At 0.3th second, the vehicle has moved from point B to point C and so on. As a result, the camera ends up capturing multiple images of the moving vehicle creating the ‘trailing blurred effect’.

Thus, if you want to project that a subject is in motion, you will have to create the ‘trailing blurred effect’. This can be done even if the subject is stationary! For example, when the subject is moving forward, the camera is stationary. This is equivalent to a case where the subject is stationary and the camera is moving backward. In other words, you can create the ‘trailing blurred effect’ by moving the camera in the required direction.

In short, the simple idea that I will like to share with you is:
Project motion into a photo by creating the ‘trailing blurred effect’ of the subject!