Portrait photography tip: a moving portrait

Saturday 15 May 2021, 14:28 by Elja Trum | 4,317 views | 1 comment

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

You usually want to capture a portrait in sharp focus. But it can also look great to show movement in your photo. A creative way to give your portrait something special.

f/4, 1/8s, 1600 ISO @ 46mm
The best result comes when your model's face is still sharp while she makes a movement that leaves part of her body or clothing blurred.

Use a shutter speed of around 1/10 of a second and put your camera on a tripod. Ask your model to keep his or her head as still as possible while making the movement. You will have to try the same photo several times. Many of your photos will fail because the face moves slightly after all.

The photo above was actually taken handheld. Thanks to the camera's image stabilisation, the face could still be captured sharply handheld at this slow shutter speed.

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About the author

Elja Trum is the founder of Photofacts and online photography course website Photofacts Academy. He has been writing about photography since 2006. Elja is also the author of (Dutch) books on composition, black-and-white photography, flash photography and portrait photography.

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1 comment

guest wrote on Monday 17 May 2021 at 15:36 | reply
Nice tip, but as you say yourself, most photos will have failed. Moreover, it’s not fun for the model either to have to do the same thing dozens of times over again. My advice would be, add the movement afterwards with Photoshop. Then you don’t have to tire anyone out other than yourself.
Translated from Dutch.

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