Four Steps For Creating Sports Motion

Text and photography by Joe Farace, December, 2005

Joe Farace is Colorado-based photographer/writer who specializes in glamour, fashion and automotive photography. Visit his websites at www.joefarace.com and joefaraceshootscars.com. Time to Complete Tools Required 15 Minutes • Adobe Photoshop CS2 • PictoColor’s iCorrect EditLab Pro • Eye Candy 5: Impact * These power tools are optional; you can use the program’s built-in features, but it may take longer. Skill Level Intermediate Using a fast shutter speed when shooting sports is a good technique for freezing action, but this approach often results in images that lack a sense of movement. That’s why many photographers use a “panning” technique to add the impression of motion to a still picture. Photo by Barry Staver Out here in the West the term “panning” conjures images of grizzled geezers down by a creek looking for gold. But photographers know panning has a more practical definition: It’s a technique in which the camera is moved in the direction of a subject in motion. By selecting a slower shutter speed than you might otherwise choose, the subject remains sharp while the background is blurred. While it’s usually best to capture these effects in the camera, there is a way to do so later in the digital darkroom. Read on. PictoColor’s iCorrect EditLab Pro Photoshop compatible plug-in was used to make the image’s color as neutral as possible. STEP 1: Ride ’em Cowperson My friend Barry Staver captured this original image at a rodeo with a Nikon D1X and 300mm AF Nikkor lens. He used a fast shutter speed (1/800) as you can tell by the clumps of dirt that are frozen in midair. I opened the file in Adobe Photoshop CS2 and used PictoColor’s (www.picto.com) iCorrect EditLab Pro plug-in to make the image’s color as neutral as possible. Photojournalist Barry Staver captured this image with a Nikon D1X and fast shutter speed (1/800) to freeze the action. STEP 2: Just A Little Bit Bigger When shooting fast action, cropping in camera can sometimes be a challenge. I wanted to see some daylight under each of the animal’s hooves and used the Canvas Size command (Image>Canvas Size) to add a 1/4” of space to the bottom of the photograph. Of course this is all white space, so I copied part of the bottom of the original image and pasted it into the empty space, but that gave me too many hooves. Therefore, I used the Clone Stamp tool to blend the pasted section and give the animals the normal number of appendages. In this particular case, this is not a critical step because most of their area will be blurry when I’m finished. Photoshop’s Clone Stamp tool was used to blend the blank area with pasted section and give the animals the normal number of hooves. Adobe Photoshop’s Canvas Size command was used to add 1/4” of blank space to the bottom of the photograph.