Motion

Sometimes you want a picture were time is stopped and every drop of water is frozen in mid air. Sometimes you don't. As a quick and dirty rule , if it is moving fast, stop it. The pictures of a bullet leaving a gun are cool because you have never seen that with the naked eye. On the other hand if you have something moving slow or even stopped you may want to add movement to it. How? By slowing down the shutter and maybe moving the camera or the lens. How I took the first picture. Things were winding down, the Bride was off some were and the groom was sitting alone. If I had walked up and snapped a picture with the flash and had the camera on automatic this would have been a throw away picture. Think back to weddings you have been to. Every relative with a camera walks up to the couples table at some point and takes a picture. The area was lit by candles and heat lamps so I knew I would get a very red/orange picture if I didn't use my flash. That was OK with me, but I knew I still wouldn't have anything special. So I decided to zoom while taking the picture. I have a Nikon 18-200mm VR lens which would help take out some of the moment that my hands would give to the picture as the VR stands for vibration reduction. I have my camera bodies set up so that the command button disables the flash. I stepped in front of him just like the 99 friends and family that had taken the same picture over the last few minutes but pushed the flash disable button as I fired which makes the camera take a longer exposure. Just before I took the picture I started to zoom the lens in. If you wait till you hear the shutter you will be too late. What I got as a dark "Bond, James Bond" moment. What was happening was a guy who was starting to feel a bit over it after having had his picture taken so many times.
The other picture was taken at the end of an engagement shoot. We were down at the Huntington Beach pier and had already used the setting sun to get the planed photos. The couple sat down and I wanted something different. Important side note. Always get your planed safe shoots first, then take chances with the art shoots. I once again disabled my flash and held on to the lens zoom barrel as I turned the camera. It took more than one shot as I couldn't keep my eye to the camera and I would sometimes have a foot or something else in the center. The same rule works for this picture. The couple were holding still and it was a quiet moment, but to make it different I added moment. I thing this picture works because it shows them having a quiet tender moment in a world that is always moving and going crazy.