How To Use Motion in Photography

okay it is Monday which means Photo
Assignments and in this video I want to
talk about Photo Assignment #7
which is going to be incorporating
motion into photography now photography
is a still medium unless you're dealing
with video I'm talking about still
images though in fact most of the
history of art if you go all the way
back to cave drawing up through
paintings and sculpture and photography
most art deals with the still image
nothing moves now the exceptions of this
would be advancements in filmmaking and
video work and then even incorporating
electronics into sculptures but largely
on the whole we're dealing with our
intents and purposes here with
photography and still photography it's
something that does not move it
represents a point in time that this can
get conceptual and maybe that point in
time gets abstracted a little bit but
that has to be implied within the
composition and that's what brings me to
talking about motion in composition this
is something that has been requested a
few times and I want to talk about
different ways that photographers
through the history of photography have
interpreted motion in still photography
and one of the most obvious examples of
this is to use a slow shutter speed when
you shoot now I've seen people do this
with pinhole cameras that are handheld
and everything blurs out it really
becomes abstracted but it does create a
sense of motion and drama and energy
within the image you could also take
this a step further you put your camera
on a tripod and anything that's not
moving during that slow shutter speed
will stay in focus and then objects that
are moving create a motion blur this is
most evident in a lot of famous
photographs particularly one of my
favorite photographers the work of Ernst
Haas was one of the great colorist of
our time but also used motion as part of
his composition in these beautiful
pictures that he did of horses there's
wonderful bullfighter and that was kind
of one of his things that he did was
using that slower shutter speed to start
bringing that energy into the picture
now a slow shutter speed is not the only
way to do this that's more of a
technical representation of motion but
this can also be done with faster
shutter speeds as well ironically with
fairly early photographers and I think a
great example of this would be Jaques
Henri Lartigue who i have talked about
extensively as well and Jaques Henri
Lartigue - one of the hallmarks to his
style was bringing the unexpected that
moment of energy into the image there was
action involved they cross the line
between being fine art images and
snapshots in that sense and so the way
he Illustrated motion was through
gesture now he was very involved with
sports and activities like that and so a
lot of times you see the gesture of
skaters involved one of my favorite
pictures is this one which is just the
back of a person looking out over a
pier and you see the water splashing up
now the water is not really blurry you
can see the droplets but what's
interesting is if you've ever stood
there and seen water splash you know
that it goes down so it is implied a
moment of time with something that is
caught in motion and it's a very
different approach to just slowing down
the shutter speed and there are other
photographers that have done similar
things like Martin Munkácsi
instance who I think was really fabulous
at this the motion is implied by the
gesture or the action or the activity
that's going on and one of my favorite
images is this sports image that blows
my mind that Martin Munkácsi took
this using a handheld large format
camera so I mean he was really an
incredible photographer especially early
on another photographer who was
influenced greatly by both Lartigue and
Munkácsi was Richard Avedon and he has
interesting ways of illustrating motion
in his work too sometimes it is with a
motion blur but other times that gesture
and I'm keep coming back to the gesture
because I think that is probably one of
the single most important things that
can imply motion and even the great
Henri Cartier-Bresson implied it this way
as well in the famous picture of the
bicycle the bicycle is blurring but it's
not over accentuated we see this as a
leading line that's coming through a
pretty complex composition in terms of
geometry but that motion is implied
simply because we understand a bicycle
and the motion that's involved the
motion blur that is here is certainly
adding to that but it is not dependent
on that motion blur to create the action
in that sequence also interesting are
photographers who have approached motion
from a scientific perspective and a
couple of these we talked about recently
Eadweard Muybridge who did photo
sequences studying movement in motion of
both humans and animals would do
multiple exposures he had ways of
tripping the camera to taking multiple
pictures to study so he was introducing
that notion of time and of course this
led to later filmmaking and the whole
idea of using multiple exposures
that would be played back in sequence
but his were still images and they were
studies of this another photographer
that I greatly admire was the work of
Etienne Jules Marey who was a French
scientist and photographer who would rig
up these custom cameras and strobe
lights to study motion in birds did some
beautiful images and some beautiful
work with that another photographer who
did a lot of work for Life magazine
using these motion studies but using
more advancing technology was an
albanian born photographer Gjon Mili who
did something very similar to what
Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey had
built on and took it a step further
using multiple exposures multiple strobe
lights and some of the advances of
technology didn't come along during his
time he also worked closely with a
scientist by the name of Harold Edgerton
who shot some very famous iconic images
using strobes and actually stopping
motion at a point in time the most
famous being the bullet going through
the Apple there's droplets and there's
some others as well but these were from
much more scientific perspective and I
think it's interesting to study these
because these are very different ways
and different techniques that you can
use to imply motion within an image we
can use the actual motion blur which
certainly shows that something is moving
that's a tricky thing because at what
point does it abstract beyond what we
can recognize what is moving maybe
that's the intent that we have I don't
know the other interesting way of
looking at that is how can you stop
motion and still imply motion not using
slower shutter speeds so in the case of
a lot of these people it's through
gesture it's through action it's through
actually using strobe lights and
multiple exposures but I also want to
challenge this notion - and gesture is
an important aspect of photography in
fact I think it would be cool to do an
entire photo assignment just on gesture
because it can… one image can be
interpreted two different ways
completely and I'll give you a case in
point this is a famous image actually
there's two of them here they're from
the same photo shoot this is obviously
Gordon Parks and he worked closely with
an author by the name of Ralph Ellison
who had a somewhat controversial novel
called the Invisible Man and there was a
series that was done there were actually
two different ones that they had done
where they had done a shorter version of
this that Gordon Parks would do photo
illustrations for and the Invisible Man
deals with this guy who lives under the
city and comes up and is able to observe
and it certainly deals with segregation that
was happening at the time and some other
very serious issues but this is a very
famous photo that was set up of the
Invisible Man
emerging from the manhole now on the
contact sheet there there there actually
many different pictures of this and
these two have become very famous and in
the one you just see his head peeking up
from the street looking up in the second
you see the gesture if he actually is
lifting the manhole and looking over his
shoulder and it's a much more composed
poetic kind of thing where as the first
one seems more off-the-cuff more
improvisational they have two completely
different feels to them for me
personally the second one where you see
more gesture involved at the manhole
coming up the way his eyes are leading
off of the composition it implies more
energy and more motion than the other
one does now neither one is right or
wrong but I'm just showing you that a
simple change of gesture can drastically
change the composition in Gordon Parks'
case these are both wonderful
compositions and these prints are both
very famous and one's not better than
the other but I'm just showing you the
difference of just being able to use a
simple gesture to imply motion finally I
want to talk about an example of a
contemporary photographer who does this
any more conceptual manner one of my
favorite photographers alive today is is
Hiroshi Sugimoto who is a Japanese born
photographer spends half his year in
Japan half his year in New York and he
is amazing he works in these large
projects and they involve an in-depth
exploration of the subject at hand one
of the more interesting ones that he's
done this is a few years old now but it was a
series on theatres where he would
actually go in and shoot movie theaters
now the concept behind this was
introducing the whole element of time
into the photographs so what these were
done is he would go into the theater
with the lights out and the photograph
the exposure lasted the duration of the
film so over the course of an hour and a
half two hours whatever the film was
that ends up being completely white on
the screen but then the ambient light in
the room is lit from the movie that's
being played and of course this is a
very conceptual approach to this and
certainly doesn't show you any motion
directly in the picture because anything
that has moved in here really has either
gone completely to white or had
effect on the overall ambient lighting
in the room but it's hard to detect
literally but what we have seen in here
is the introduction of time now this is a
much more conceptual and heady approach
and much more difficult to get into but
I think it's interesting to show that
maybe it's not motion directly but it's
an implied motion that was there you're
seeing evidence of that and so I just
think the Sugimoto is brilliant and
maybe you're agree maybe you don't
because this isn't literal
interpretation of motion but I think it
is definitely something that takes it to
the next level in terms of concept so
anyway this is the assignment and I'm
going to actually do this one along with
you guys I'm going to figure out
something that I want to do with motion
and that will be coming up we'll be
filming that in the next week and we'll
have two weeks to do this and so I want
you to start thinking about it now and
then we'll actually get into a little
more when I give you an example people
have requested that I do that I did for
the last one I will do it on this one as
well and anyway I'm really excited about
this if you guys have any questions or
comments please leave them below and if
you enjoyed this video please remember
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see you guys in the next one
until then later

How To Use Motion in Photography

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