Photography Tips | Using Camera Shutter Speed Creatively

© 2014 Wazari Wazir | A Buddhist Devotee Spins Prayer Wheel at Boudhanath Stupa | Kathmandu  | 1/3 | f/10 | ISO 160 | 24 mm

© 2014 Wazari Wazir | A Buddhist Devotee Spins Prayer Wheel at Boudhanath Stupa | Kathmandu  | 1/30 | f/3.5 | ISO 320 | 24 mm

“A Perfect Photo That is Empty of Any Feeling Will Never Equal a Blurred Photo Full of Emotion.”

– Olivier Föllmi –

Have you ever wondered why, even the most expensive camera or professional body camera have “Manual Control” or mode? Why they don’t have a simple Auto button, and let the camera do all the thinking, why we spend few thousand dollars on a professional camera and yet we still need to adjust here and there, why can’t Program or Auto Mode make it easy for us.

A camera, is nothing more but just a tool, but it was made for different purpose, some have advantage more than the others, if I can take a hoes for an example, the purpose of the shoes is just to protect someones feet, but then, sportsman, sprinters, marathon runners, trekkers, hikers and mountain climbers needs a different shoes for different purpose, same goes to photography, photographers need a different camera and lenses for different purpose to get maximum output.

Anywhere, the reason for this article is to let you know that a camera is just a tool, to use it creatively we must master our tool. For this entry, I want to talk about creative use of shutter speed. A camera’s shutter speed not only can control exposure, but it’s also one of the most powerful creative tools in photography. There is  a  lot of creative options when it comes to implying motion.

In order to use creative shutter speed creatively, we must understand about “Exposure Triangle”, it is about this three element to determine the right exposure, so that you photograph doesn’t appear too dark or too bright. In order to get the right exposure, we must control Camera ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed. In some situation for general shot, like you if you are covering an annual dinners inside the hotel grand ballroom, where the lighting is even, you can use Auto or fully Program Mode and with flash attach, most of the times, you will get right exposure, same goes to outdoors photography for general shot.

But, if you want to be creative with shutter speed or wanted to get a different look in your photograph, and wanted to select the shutter speed by yourself to get a desired effect, then you need to control the shutter speed manually, you can either use “Tv” Mode for Canon or “S” Mode on Nikon camera, Tv or S Mode is “Shutter Priority Mode” where you choose the shutter speed and the camera will choose the Aperture accordingly to gives you the right exposure.

For the above photograph I choose to use Manual Mode, for the two top photographs, I use slow shutter speed of 1/3, much slower than 1/30 for the last photograph. To get a slower shutter speed I need to use lower ISO and Small Aperture, lower shutter speeds means, more light will coming through, so to get the right exposure, I need to Lower the ISO to make the sensor less sensitive to light digitally and then I also need to use smaller shutter speed also in the purpose of reducing the light getting through.

Then I decided to get less movement, less blurry effect, in order to get that, I need to use much faster shutter speed, but I cannot simply use fast shutter speed and get the result I wanted without adjusting the ISO and Aperture, If I just use faster shutter speed without adjusting the ISO and Aperture, do you know what will happen? My picture will be too dark, underexposed.

In order for me to maintain the same exposure, I need to change the ISO to a little bit higher which is ISO 320, set the Aperture to f/3.5 and use a little bit faster shutter speed than the previous two photograph above which is 1/30.

Still photograph unlike videos cannot show movements, the photograph is static but by using shutter speed creatively, we can show or give the viewers a sense of movement in our photograph, If I use super fast shutter speed, and totally freeze the action there, most of you will think that the person is just touching or standing by the large prayer wheel, and some of you might never knew that, those large thing is a prayer wheel.

To those of you who are beginners, just starting out to get an interest in photography, there is no need to memorise those settings that I’ve given here, instead, get to know on how to control exposure by understanding about  “Exposure Triangle”, get to know you camera well, master your tool, then only you can create art. A photographers is a visual storytellers, we tell a story with our photographs and in order for us to tell a great story we must understand the tool at hand, which is our camera.

Actually by understanding on how our camera works is not good enough to tell a visual or interesting story, we also needs to know about good lighting, great composition. In another word, we also needs to know about our subjects, whether it is nature, building, human and we also needs to know about their culture, religion, belief, about communication and a lot more things to be a good photographer.

It is not a rocket science to basically understand on how camera works but it will take a lifetime to learn about photography. I would like to end my post here with a great quote from Edward Weston, 20th-century American photographer. He has been called “one of the most innovative and influential American photographers  and “One of The Masters of 20th Century Photography.”

“The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don’t know what to do with it.”

– Edward Weston –