A flurry of colorful motion as a great blue heron takes flight, as seen with a slow shutter speed.
Most times I’ve photographed birds, and birds in flight, I’ve opted for fast shutter speeds to capture as much detail as possible. But sometimes it’s fun to slow everything down and allow motion blur into the finished photograph. The two photos in this post are examples of this. They were created at Great Falls on the Potomac River as viewed from the Maryland side. Both were at 440mm and a fairly small aperture of f/16, giving me a shutter speed of 1/30 of a second. This allowed a very nice amount of blur when the great blue heron took flight.
With a slow shutter speed, a flying great blue heron can take on a ghostly appearance.
In one case I held the camera fairly still, keeping the rocks mostly in sharp focus. But in the other the tripod head was more loose and the camera moved, making the rocks look softer and out of focus, though not as much as the heron. I love the beautiful gradations of blue and gray, and the bright whites and dark blues resulting from the different colored feathers of the heron. It’s also interesting seeing the bits of blurred yellow and orange from its feet.
I think there’s a lot of potential in this style of photography to create some interesting and pleasing images. And it could easily be applied to many different genres, not just wildlife photography, but to anything that moves. Have you ever intentionally used slower shutter speeds to capture motion blur? How did it turn out? And if not then give it a go one of these days.
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