In Motion (P6/Q3): Diary Entry

This project began with shooting with Rozy using her digital camera outside. The conditions began sunny, and then we came inside and realized some changes that we needed to make to the way we were shooting. We needed to use a faster shutter speed to freeze motion, and also shoot some with a slower shutter speed to blur the motion. All in all, we needed to focus on capturing the subject, in this case, Rozy jumping and clearly show the motion, not just by using the effect of blurring her while she jumped, but also in showing her position in the air, having her in an action pose. When we went back outside to shoot, it had clouded over.

We took the images into the lab and compiled them with the idea of making one print with three or four poses showing the progression of the jumps. Using photoshop, I tried to combine several different jumps, putting together the beginning middle and end of separate ones. This proved to be hard, because when they were put together, it was obvious that one of the poses was out of place, without being able to describe why. Even the slightest change in sharpness or direction of motion, or even where her legs were, gave away that the poses didn't all belong to one jump. So after that, I decided to go with the best progression, rather than going with the best beginning middle and end poses which ended up looking unnatural.

So for the first one, I chose a jump where she springs from the cement block, curls her legs into a cannonball and then lands on the ground. The jump is very symmetrical, and other than the middle jump, where her hair is flying up and it looks very much in motion, there wasn't much special about this one. I decided to include it anyways, and then moved on to the second print.

The second one was a series of two jumps which I like because the poses are similar, and very obviously followed one another. Also, the photo is very vertical, and she seems to be mid jump at the first pose and landing towards the ground on the second pose, so it looks like she came falling from pretty high. I like this one because the jump is not complete, and it is not just a horizontal motion, but rather looks like she is jumping at an angle to the camera. Also the way that she is close to the camera and large in the frame makes it look crowded, and like she was jumping really close by.

The way I did this was in photoshop, using one of the jumps and the background as the main photo, and adding the pose of another shot as a layer on top, erasing all the extra things around the pose so it seems to be in the same frame.