BLURRING THE ACTION

PHOTO TIP - HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BLUR - Years ago, I took a series of college level photography classes from master photographer Richard Senti, one time editor of Camera & Darkroom Magazine. Rich was a renowned expert in the darkroom. When a student would show Rich a print that exhibited promise but had been rendered less than sharp in enlargement, Rich would praise the print's good points, then add the comment, "But don't you think it's just a bit soft?" I managed to turn the tables on him during class one evening when he brought a series of exquisite abstract photos he had taken of Bisbee's annual La Vuelta de Bisbee bicycle races. Rich was proudly showing off the prints in which both the bicyclists and the background exhibited motion blur. The sense of opposing movement was almost overwhelming. The students were oohing and ahhing when, suddenly I chimed in with a comment. "They're really nice," I said. "But don't you think they're just a little soft?" Rich laughed so hard he almost cried. The truth was that Rich's deft use of motion blur was sheer genius. On the other hand, sometimes dead sharp is just dead dead. As a case in point, Bisbee is renowned for its annual Fourth of July Coaster Races. I've seen lots of photos of these races in which both coaster and background are rendered dead sharp. And therein lies a problem. The photographer sees a coaster racing down Bisbee's steep Tombstone Canyon Road. However, what the viewer of the photograph sees is a coaster that appears to have come to a dead stop in the roadway and is going nowhere. There is zero sense of motion. Not all blur is good. Not all blur is bad. Out of focus is, of course, just out of focus. However, motion blur, blur caused by camera movement, subject movement or both, is often an effective means of imparting a sense of dynamic motion to a photograph. My next tip will deal with one means of achieving this effect, camera panning. LARRY ELKINS ELKINSPHOTOS