What is Shutter Speed?

Shutter speed refers to the duration for which the camera’s shutter remains open, determining the period during which the sensor is exposed to light. A longer exposure time allows more light to reach the sensor, resulting in a brighter image – controlling and adapting shutter speed is crucial for capturing either sharp images of moving things or exploring creative blurring in moving objects.

Examples of Slow Shutter Speed Images:

Using a slower shutter speed means more light hits the camera due to the shutter being open for longer, which can create these motion blurs when photographing fast movement (such as cars). These blurs can be intentional, but if unintentional the shutter speed should be increased to remove them. In these two examples a slow shutter speed was used when photographing cars which led to these blurs, making it seem like the cars are driving past at extremely high speeds.

Examples of Fast Shutter Speed Images:

Faster shutter speeds mean the shutter is open for smaller amounts of time which consequently limits the amount of light that can hit the camera – this reduces blurs and increases sharpness of an image, which is good for capturing sharp images of movement (such as athletes running). In these two examples a fast shutter speed was used to take sharp images of fast movement, such as the bird’s wings flapping or the shattered glass flying in all directions.

Key Figures of Fast Shutter Speed – Muybridge and Edgerton

Eadweard Muybridge is known for his groundbreaking photographic investigations into motion, which significantly contributed to the development and rise of cinema. He was commissioned to capture the movement of a horse in order to demonstrate that a horse’s hooves are elevated from the ground during a trot.

Muybridge is also famous for his work in chronophotography, where he studied how animals move from 1878 to 1886. He used several cameras to take pictures of animals at different stages of their movement. He also created the zoopraxiscope, a machine that projected painted moving images from glass discs, which came before the flexible film strips we use in movies today.

Harold Eugene Edgerton (April 6, 1903 – January 4, 1990) was an American scientist and researcher who taught electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is well-known for turning the stroboscope from a little-known lab tool into a widely used device. Additionally, he played a significant role in creating sonar technology and deep-sea photography. His inventions were used alongside Jacques Cousteau in efforts to find shipwrecks and even the Loch Ness Monster.

Key Figures of Slow Shutter Speed – Sugimoto and Woodman

Marcel Duchamp, a key figure in early 20th-century Cubism and Dadaism, had a significant impact on Sugimoto’s ideas about art and the concept of time. Sugimoto frequently uses large format cameras and long exposure techniques to photograph light as it acts in predictable yet controlled manners.

Francesca Woodman’s family would spend their summers at their farmhouse in the countryside close to Florence, Italy, where she took many of her photographs. The rich European culture and art greatly influenced her artistic growth. You can see the impact of surrealist artists like Man Ray and Claude Cahun in her work, especially in the themes and style she chose. She honed her ideas and skills while studying at the Rhode Island School of Design; her role as an innovator is really important, especially in the 1970s when photography was often seen as less valuable than painting and sculpture. She paved the way for future American artists, like Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin, who used photography to delve into themes of identity.

My Shutter Speed Photoshoot, 24/09/24

Above is a photo I took inspired by Francesca Woodman – I have used a slow shutter speed on a passing car to achieve the ghostly and abstract atmosphere of her work, where the car is hardly recognisable and just a blur. I then edited it in Photoshop to make it black and white similar to Woodman’s work, and corrected the photo as it was slightly overexposed.

This is a similar photo I took, however I think this one wasn’t as great since you can still clearly recognise it is a car, so I think it hasn’t successfully captured the abstract feeling of Woodman’s work. I also didn’t have the camera mounted on a tripod in this photo which resulting in a lot of unintentional motion blur in the surroundings.

Class Photoshoot

Above are a few most successful images from the class photoshoot, using a low shutter speed to create an abstract and almost ghostly image (edited in Photoshop by me to be black and white). These are the four most successful pictures in my opinion since none of them were too over/underexposed and each one intentionally used a long exposure time to successfully capture the abstract atmosphere of images by photographers such as Francesca Woodman.

Aperture and Depth of Field

Aperture (measured in f/stop) controls the size of the lens opening that allows light into your camera. You can blur the foreground and background that bracket your subject (known as shallow depth of field) by opening up the aperture with a low f-stop number; alternatively, you can keep your photo sharp from the foreground through to the background (known as wide depth of field) by closing the aperture down with a high f-stop number. Depth of field is defined as being the distance between the nearest and the furthest objects giving a focused image – a small depth of field comes with a lower aperture value, and leads to very little being in focus whereas a larger depth of field comes with higher aperture values and makes more of an image be in focus.

Focal Length

Focal length (usually measured in mm) is defined as being the optical distance from the centre of a lens and its focus. This determines what you see when using the camera, for example a shorter focal length captures more due to a wider angle.

Auto vs Manual Focus

Auto focus is typically general use due to its simplicity, whereas manual focus is used more when close ups and fine detail are needed in an image. When using manual focus, you should use the focus ring on the end of the lens and adjust for each shot as necessary.

Example photos using aperture:

Aperture of 2.8:

In this photograph, the toy plane is noticeably much more in focus compared to other objects in the background, highlighting it as the main subject of the image. This low aperture creates a very shallow depth of field, creating this low focus effect on the background.

Aperture of 5.6:

When compared to the previous image, this one is very similar in terms of the plane still clearly standing out as the subject/main focus – however, a slightly higher aperture value has enlarged the depth of field which consequently has made the other objects captured in frame more in focus.

Aperture of 11:

As the aperture value continues to increase, the depth of field clearly becomes larger which as a result makes even more of the objects captured be in focus. Due to the depth of field not highlighting one particular aspect of this image, there is no singular main focus which implies everything captured in this image is of equal importance.

Aperture of 22:

Finally, with a very high aperture value, the depth of field is very large leading to every object being completely in focus which further emphasises the effect of equal importance first noticed at an aperture value of 22. Blurs are also minimised, which can be useful for capturing images where you want everything to be in focus (such as landscapes, nature etc.)

Artist Research: Uta Barth

Over the last twenty years, Uta Barth has focused her art on how we perceive visuals. Known for her “empty” images that focus on painterly abstraction, she skillfully creates blurred backgrounds, cropped compositions, and plays with natural light to seize those quick, almost unnoticed moments that usually linger at the edges of our vision. By intentionally stepping away from traditional photography and the typical use of a camera, Barth’s work thoughtfully breaks down the norms of visual representation, highlighting the boundaries of what we can actually see.

Some of my work, inspired by Barth:

To achieve the soft focus effect Barth uses, I used a low aperture value as well as manual focus. However, I feel like this wasn’t very successful at capturing the abstract nature of Barth’s work since my image’s focus was slightly too sharp to achieve this – furthermore, I believe the scene I have captured was a poor choice for trying to achieve an abstract effect due to a large variety of things present in the image (chairs, blank walls, door with a light that clearly stands out). To improve next time, I will adjust the f/stop value to be even lower to really try and strive for a shallow depth of field and I will photograph a less vibrant scene with less objects and things to look at to maximise the chances of me capturing the abstract effect used by Barth.

Above is the same image but edited using Photoshop – I found the original image to be too vibrant and colourful to qualify as abstract, so I toned down the saturation to better achieve an abstract effect. Furthermore, I cropped out most of the image to reduce the amount of things present to try work towards more of an abstract effect; overall, I think I could definitely do better if I had adjusted my aperture values properly to achieve a low focus effect.

My work compared to Barth’s:

My work against a picture taken by Uta Barth. My work is clearly not very abstract since the objects captured can be clearly identified and the colours are vibrant which makes the scene even less abstract; in comparison, Barth’s image uses softer colours which blend together naturally as well as a much shallower depth of field, successfully creating an abstract effect.

Camera Obscura

Nicephore Niepce

Henry Fox Talbot

Daguerreotype

Richard Maddox

George Eastman

Kodak (Brownie)

Digital Photography

Artist Research – Henry Mullins

For the images above, I displayed them in a triptych since they all have warm and vibrant colours which go well together as well as the fact they all focus on landscapes. The darker tones in the sky of the first image also juxtapose the lighter and more colourful tones of the sky in the second image, although if I were to do this again I would put the image of the flower in the middle for consistency.

I then displayed these images together since I like how they’re all of the same landscape, whilst the black and white version in the middle draws focus and creates contrasts in tones when compared to the other two images.

I wasn’t too pleased with the final outcome of this overall, as the editing has slightly overexposed some of the images as well as being over saturated or having too high vibrance. The layout also doesn’t group all the photos too well (a triptych or a 2×2 square would have been better to show them as being part of one set) and the brown background also doesn’t compliment any of the colours well.

This is the final outcome I am most satisfied with, since the triptych as well as all the photos being black in white clearly shows intention and that these are all part of one set. Furthermore, I like how the two photos on the edges focus on the sky and rocks in contrast to the centre image which focuses more on water ripples and rocks as this compliments the overall presentation really nicely.