Creative Blurring

This morning a quick "How He Do Dat". I like the effect of blurring some elements in a picture to show motion while other things in the picture appear still. This is an example I shot in Rome in 2008.

 

If you've ever tried crossing a street in Rome you know the bravery of that guy on the median. BTW no one in Rome knows what a neutral ground is.

I was shooting with my Canon EOS 5D in manual as usual. I had to find a shutter speed that would blur the cars but not the pedestrians. There was enough difference between the speed of the cars and the much slower movements of the pedestrians that 1/15 sec. did the trick. The aperture was f32 and the ISO was 125. Although shadows are not evident in this photograph you can see by the partly cloudy sky that I did have plenty of sunlight to work with. I shot this hand held which meant I couldn't go too awfully slow with the shutter. I just don't like carrying a tripod around when we're on vacation. I do always take some time to go out on purely photographic walks when we vacation but this wasn't one of those walks.

I tried several shots to see if I liked having cars close and tourists in the background or different vehicles moving at different speeds.

I settled on the shot below largely because all the vehicles were moving at similar speed and one was passing just in front of the crossing pedestrian. I confess that no one has agreed with me that the effect makes this shot outstanding but it is an effect I plan to use whenever the situation seems to offer such an opportunity.

The last thing I tried was cropping the photo in to a more horizontal orientation. I thought that might focus more attention on the contrast between the cars and the guy on the median.

I've also sharpened the picture and lowered the luminance setting of the blues to give the sky more depth.