Using a slower shutter speed can make really interesting photos because it shows movement by dragging it out instead of freezing it in time. I like the overall softer, warmer effect the blur makes. Adding tones can also make it look softer and more appealing, and this works very well with slow shutter speeds. The hardest part of this was keeping the camera completely still while taking the photos. The slightest movement made the entire photo blurry, ruining the effect of the moving objects. I had to set it to automatically take the picture after 30 seconds so the movement of my hand wouldn’t blur the photo.

After using water to make interesting shapes with the fast shutter speed photos, I wanted to see what effects water could make with slow shutter speed. To take the water photos (1 and 5), I dropped a penny into a plate of water. I chose an angle that was almost level with the plate to make the splash more visible. The photos that came out of this were surprising! In 2 and 3, I like how only the subject is blurry, and everything else is sharp. This helps bring attention to the motion. I think the angles I used also help pull the focus to the subject.

Fast shutter speed

What I love about fast shutter speeds is that you can see new things that happen way too fast for the naked eye to see. It’s always a surprise what you’re going to get, because looking through the viewfinder, it all looks like a blur. And it’s up to chance whether you’ll get exactly the right moment. The hardest part of doing this is getting enough light; you need a lot of light coming in during that tiny portion of a second that the shutter is open.

To me, the movements of water are especially mysterious; it can take on so many different shapes, and it’s hard to know how different objects/forces will make it move. The 5th photo is very interesting to me, because when first dropped into the water, the card appears not to disturb it at all. But with the camera, you can see the subtle ripples it creates that disappear very quickly. The 2nd and 3rd photos also reveal interesting things about water that are normally too fast and blurry to notice. I like the ring of water where the grape just broke the surface in photo 2, and the huge frozen splash the plum creates in photo 3. I also like the floating droplets in photo 1 in contrast with the blurry, dark background.

Fast shutter speeds can also suspend movement that people can see, making bizarre shapes. The catalogue pages in photo 4 flip by in the wind, but suspended in the air, they look almost graceful.

Margot Tenenbaum This is my second character portrait, this time of a movie character, Margot Tenenbaum from The Royal Tenenbaums. Margot likes to lock herself in the bathroom and sit in the bathtub watching a tiny TV. She also smokes, which she has been doing since she was a teenager, although her family has never known this. I enlarged this character’s eyes with Photoshop because her eyes are an important feature, and I darkened them because her eye makeup is a defining characteristic of her. The red book on the floor is titled Three Plays by Anton Chekhov, an allusion to Margot’s love for reading and writing plays. This background is not from the original image. It was difficult to find a bathroom that matched the old-fashioned, brightly-colored style of the Tenenbaum house, and that also fit the angle of the subject.

Margot Tenenbaum

This is my second character portrait, this time of a movie character, Margot Tenenbaum from The Royal Tenenbaums. Margot likes to lock herself in the bathroom and sit in the bathtub watching a tiny TV. She also smokes, which she has been doing since she was a teenager, although her family has never known this.

I enlarged this character’s eyes with Photoshop because her eyes are an important feature, and I darkened them because her eye makeup is a defining characteristic of her. The red book on the floor is titled Three Plays by Anton Chekhov, an allusion to Margot’s love for reading and writing plays.

This background is not from the original image. It was difficult to find a bathroom that matched the old-fashioned, brightly-colored style of the Tenenbaum house, and that also fit the angle of the subject.

Cindy Sherman is a photographer and film director who is famous for her portraits of different characters. It is intriguing (and a little disturbing) that all of her portraits are of herself, but each one is completely different. She uses photo editing and extreme makeup/costumes/backgrounds to make each one completely unique. I tried to do something similar with this portrait by turning the girl into someone else. This photo recreates the cover of “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” by Ransom Riggs. I really like the idea of these children forced to live in hiding because of their bizarre talents. This particular character, the girl who floats, is named Olive. To portray that character with my subject, I focused on her serious expression and the fact that she is floating. I also used the Photoshop tool “Liquify” to enlarge and round out her eyes, making her look a little less human.

Cindy Sherman is a photographer and film director who is famous for her portraits of different characters. It is intriguing (and a little disturbing) that all of her portraits are of herself, but each one is completely different. She uses photo editing and extreme makeup/costumes/backgrounds to make each one completely unique.

I tried to do something similar with this portrait by turning the girl into someone else. This photo recreates the cover of “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” by Ransom Riggs. I really like the idea of these children forced to live in hiding because of their bizarre talents. This particular character, the girl who floats, is named Olive. To portray that character with my subject, I focused on her serious expression and the fact that she is floating. I also used the Photoshop tool “Liquify” to enlarge and round out her eyes, making her look a little less human.