3 Ways To Show Movement for Better Photos

This was one of my earliest photos. I was able to capture the movement of the dancer’s leg while keeping all other movement frozen. This was done with the shutter speed.

So much of daily life is about movement. So if you can learn how to show that in your photos, your result will more likely capture people’s minds and hearts.

But how do you control how movement shows up in a photo?

Well, in a previous blog post, 5 Tips for Making Better Photos, I talked about how shutter speed shows movement. In this post I’ll dig in a bit deeper to this idea.

I captured my pup, Leila, on a snowy day that had her super excited, and me feeling very cold.

Freezing Movement

When you freeze movement the resulting photo can have the potential to capture candid emotion. You can also give the viewer an energetic feeling that can help take them to the scene.

This is easier to do when there is a lot of available light. If you remember that both the aperture and shutter speed can give you light. With a well-lit scene, you can use your aperture to give you light and use the shutter to show movement.

To freeze movement, you need your shutter speed going pretty fast. If this is your goal and you don’t have to worry about how much light you have, crank up your shutter speed and see what happens. You’ll find that if your shutter speed is too slow, you may not…