Step by Step /

Make your own intentional motion blur

1 Choose a subject that works

The direction of camera movement should parallel the shape of your subject. For example, trees grow vertically, so we moved the camera vertically to follow the lines of the trunks. Coastal landscapes are typically horizontal, so here you should move the camera horizontally.

3 Use the ball-head

For horizontal movements, use the panning movement of the ball-head for steady, flawless side-to-side motion blur. For vertical movements, lock the panning lever and loosen the ball-head locking screw, then move your hand as steadily as possible when tracking up and down.

5 Pause for thought

Slow down – or stop completely – part way through your movement. The image sensor will capture more scene detail during this rest period, so you’ll be left with a clearer image of your environment at this point, but still maintain some artistic motion blur in the final shot.

Set up your tripod

Although you’ll be moving your camera intentionally to create motion blur, you will still need to use a tripod for this technique to work. Keeping the Nikon fixed in one place will make it easier to introduce blur that looks intentional, by moving in only one direction.

4 Slow down your shutter

To introduce motion blur we set a shutter speed of one second in Shutter Priority mode. The aperture and ISO are almost completely irrelevant, so we kept ISO low at 100 to minimize image noise, and the Nikon automatically chose f/3.2 to expose the image.

6 Aim upwards and spin

Up, down, left and right are all fine for the typical ICM shot, but how about rotating the camera? Here, we shot up towards the tree canopy and panned our camera around while exposing for a circular motion blur effect to create even more of an abstract result.