By now we’ve thrown the original list away and started making up new topics on Friday.  I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote the original list but we didn’t like the subjects anymore.  But carrying on we just needed a new topic for the week.  Week 8 we decided should be “Motion”.  We had a long conversation of what do we mean by motion and we talked about capturing something that looks like it’s moving.  Pretty straight forward really, but what to shoot?

Saturday afternoon it came to me.  What about an action shot of James on one of his skateboards?  That would be great?  Trouble is James isn’t big on action – too much like his dad.  But he does take the board out and go round the neighborhood.  So I came up with this cunning plan.  Lisa drives her car with me in the trunk with a camera and light.  The trunk is open and behind the car James is riding his skateboard – I mean how hard can this be?   The answer was actually pretty easy!

We discussed doing it Saturday evening, but James wanted to wash his hair first – which I should point out is crap coz he them put his beany hat on!  Go figure!  So Sunday was chosen as the day.

We needed to take the shot late evening as the sun was going down, as I needed to use a slower shutter speed so the background looked blurry showing James was moving.  If he was in bright sunlight the shutter would be quick and it would look like he was stationary on the board and I just took a shot – that wouldn’t be “motion” at all.

So 7pm Sunday night arrived and out we all go.  I jump in the trunk with Abi who’s my lighting assistant.  Lisa is behind the wheel and James is all clean in his beany 🙁 ready to go.  We found a road in our neighborhood that had a nice hill that wasn’t too busy or steep.  James and I tried the location the previous night and he reached almost 30 miles an hour.

So back we went to get the shot.

In total it took us three runs down the hill where I shot off around 40 shots a run – just pointing at James and holding the shutter button down.  The first run helped me get the exposure right, the second two helped me get the one in focus picture that looked great.  We quickly found out that shooting him while in Shade looked best, and every now and then his face would hit some sunlight coming through the trees to light him up.  If only I could time it right to get THAT shot!  Then I wouldn’t need any lights.

On the third run we nailed it and I got the picture below.  This has very little post processing.  It’s pretty much right out of the camera so we were lucky I guess.

I’m REALLY pleased with the shot and feel it does capture the feeling of motion – even James liked it.