HOW TO: ACE AN ABSTRACT

SLOW IT DOWN

Laurie says… The motion blur will depend on both the length of your exposure and the speed your subject is moving, so it’s not an exact science. I like to start very slowly by attaching a polarizer to remove a couple stops of light, shooting at ISO100 and dialling in a super-narrow aperture.

FIND A FOCUS MARKER

Laurie says… Using a dark filter on a dark day can confuse your AF system and cause it to hunt. You can get over this by finding a marker on the same focal plane as your subject and focusing on that either completely manually or via AF first and then switching to manual.

EXPERIMENTATION

Laurie says… Slowly increase your shutter speed as you shoot and pay attention to what you’re capturing. Once you’ve found the sweet spot, keep shooting. The fickle nature of this technique means you’ll benefit from having lots of shots to choose from.