Motion has always played a large part in the development and history of photography. Early photography processes required the subject to remain completely still for the length of exposure utilising head clamps to help minimise motion blur. Invention of faster cameras and film with shorter exposure times enabled people to see motion stopped in time with more detail and no blur. This allowed people to see moments otherwise impossible with the human eye and became fascinating for scientists and photographers over the years such as Eadweard Muybridge and Harold Edgerton as well as contemporary photographers Lois Greenfield and Howard Shatz. With this option of a fast or slow shutter speed photographers could choose the amount of blur in there images. Images with deliberate blur can be effective to convey a certain mood and sense of movement in an image. Early photographers seem to have spent a lot of time trying to stop motion blur while nowadays motion blur is used to give an object a sense of motion in an image, going as far as to add it in post production. Motion blur can stop an object looking unnatural, for example a bird caught in flight can look unnatural as it is typically seen moving. However, contemporary photographers use fast shutter speeds to deliberately give an image this sense of wonderment.
Photography has enabled people to capture a reproduction of the world. It has allowed us to accurately record all aspects of life. The history of photography has seen the medium flourish, enabling a detailed view of a certain motion in time. “Walking figures, running figures, falling figures, equestrian figures and vehicles, all caught in their acts without the slightest appearance of movement” (Scharf, 1974) due to the advent of the instantaneous photograph brought much excitement to photographers and scientists of the time. Advances in the technology have not only allowed people to realistically capture time but also to produce intriguing and pleasing artistic photographs. Different art groups and artists over time have been influenced and reacted to the changes in the development of photography.
The first permanent process of photography was the daguerreotype, which was perfected in 1839 by Louis Jaques Mande Daguerre and produced a one off unique mirrored copy of the subject. Prior to this photographic experiments produced images that would quickly fade and required hours of exposure time in which time the movement of the sun blurred the image. The quality of the daguerreotype was remarkable in detail and earned the name “mirror with a memory” as they were produced on reflective silver-coated copper plates. Exposure time could be between 10 to 60 seconds and up to 15 to 30 minutes. Therefore the subject was required to sit or stand for the length of the exposure remaining completely motionless. To prevent the subject moving and incurring motion blur on the print, head clamps, tripods, rests and the like where used. This resulted in stiff, serious looking subjects.
The invention of a faster camera and faster film with shorter exposure time enabled people to see motion stopped in time with more detail and less motion blur. The wet- collodion process or ambrotype (Fredrick Scott Archer and Peter Fry, 1851) allowed a finely detailed negative to be produced and any number of copies to be made. This process was cheaper than the daguerreotype and the exposure time was much less (2 to 15 seconds) allowing photos to be taken of moving subjects and not just limited to still subjects. This process also allowed photography to become more widely available to the general public.
Eadweard Muybridge, an experimental photographer, was fascinated by this process and designed a camera with a wider lens taking in a large amount of light as possible. Leland Stanford, an American businessman and politician, hired Muybridge to take photos of his horse at full gallop along a racecourse for the study of animal movement. Muybridge set up multiple still cameras along the course, which were set off simultaneously capturing the small movements of the horse. For the first time ever, motion was frozen in time and people were able to see what the human eye could never see before. Muybridge had revealed the secret of movement. These first pictures, taken in 1878, were shadow images which didn’t provide much detail, however, as photographic advances were made, Muybridge continued his studies of movement using gelatine-coated dry plates which were much more sensitive to light and enabled a faster exposure time once again (1/2000th of a second). He took many photographs of different animals and humans performing a number of everyday activities. The photographs were helpful, used by artists and scientists in the study of movement. Muybridge’s developments finally led to advancements in the motion picture industry, labelling Muybridge as the father of the motion picture.
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| Eadweard Muybridge, Horse In Motion (1878) |
The gelatine-coated dry plates process enabled a faster shutter speed and therefore hand held cameras could be used with limited blur and made cameras more widely available. William Henry Fox Talbot’s advancements in photograph techniques led to the use of the negative to produce prints. This allowed many prints to be made and therefore photos did not have to be single originals. In 1851 Fox Talbot also assisted in the development of capturing movement using the electronic spark. Using a 10-microsecond flash to captured the microsecond of time otherwise unable to be seen, however these pictures lacked detail and until Edgerton where limited to scientific research labs.
During the 1930’s, Harold Eugene Edgerton, a pioneer of multi flash, high speed and stroboscopic photography, formulated the flash used in photography to capture objects in action and used exposure times between thousandths and up to millionths of a second which revealed movements the human eye was previously unable to see alone. His work continued the experiments carried out by his predecessors such as Muybridge and Talbot. Edgarton invented a camera that could record the tiniest slice of time, such as a hummingbird in flight, balloons bursting or a bullet in travel. Objects in motion or in the dark that previous models of cameras were unable to capture could now be taken. This opened new ways of seeing for the study of scientific experiments and a new photographic art form. Edgerton’s photographs were “well thought out and well executed works of art…with the strobe, Edgerton captured occurrences too brief for the unaided eye to perceive.” (Rosen, 1989) The strobe light was shorter than any other flash bulb produced and gave control using electrical illumination, which replaced slower shutters. An example of such an Edgerton photograph is Densmore Shute Bends the Shaft, which shows a multiple exposure, using strobes, of a golfer taking a swing. In this photograph the viewer is presented with sharp detail of the golfers swing.
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| Harold Eugene Edgerton, Densmore Shute Bends the Shaft (1938) |
Edgerton’s invention of the rapatronic camera for the purpose of nuclear experiments was capable of capturing images with an exposure time of ten nanoseconds recording an atomic bomb one-millionth of a second after detonation. This provided priceless technological information to scientists. “Beyond the time threshold of human vision lies a world of rapid motion which can be seen only with the aid of accessories that manipulate time as the microscope or telescope manipulates space.” (James R Killian Jr)
Edgerton was primarily an engineer and scientist interested in uncovering the unknown and solving problems. Unlike art photography his work is not about beauty or producing meaning but rather to show helpful and unique information otherwise unseen by the human eye. “Don’t make me out to be an artist, I am an engineer. I am after the facts. Only the facts.” This strobe photography influenced many artists and art groups around the time (1912) who were fascinated by movement, speed, technology and new machines, such as the Futurists, Dadaists and Modernist. The Futurists believed that motion destroyed form and therefore tried to convey a static representation of movement using repetition influenced by strobe photography. This new art form, strobe photography, as well as the discoveries of movement in speed photography, inspired perhaps by earlier experimental photographer Muybridge, impacted on these art groups as they concentrated on speed and movement in the static form, expanding on the idea of speed as art. As the Futurists 1909 Manifesto declared “the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed”. Giacomo Balla, an Italian Futurist artist, was concerned with motion and the electric light. His works convey motion through abstract repetition giving the appearance of movement and portray the passing of time. “Instead of representing a moving car they gave expression to movement by means of abstract forms”. An example of this style of abstract repetition is Balla’s Flight of the Swallows (1913). The image is abstract yet we can tell he is trying to convey birds in flight. The swirly lines suggest movement giving a once static form of art motion. Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending A Staircase (1912) is another example of photography influencing art. Duchamp uses repetition similar in appearance to Edgerton’s strobe photography or Muybridge’s experimental photography. He also uses abstract shapes, as does Balla, with intersecting cubist shapes suggesting a moving figure descending a staircase.
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| Giacomo Balla, Flight of the Swallows (1913) |
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Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) |
In 1932 the f64 group was founded by a group of photographers who were reacting against the artistic, soft focus, self-coloured photography being produced at the time. They were for “pure” photography recreating reality and reaching photographic perfection, without manipulating the image. They were “a group dedicated to exhibiting and promoting a new direction in photography… photography should celebrate rather than disguise the mediums unrivalled capacity to present the world as it is” (L Hostetler, 2004). They produced sharp images with maximum depth of field, hence the name f64, meaning the smallest aperture on a camera. The f64 group used a small aperture setting, large negatives and glossy papers to achieve this reality photographic perfection. The constant depth of field produced a sharp image in the foreground and background creating “qualities of clearness and definition of the photographic image” and eliminated blur in an image. This type of photography impacted on the course photography took in history.
Both Muybridge and Edgerton’s images create a sense of wonder in the viewers, as the moment stopped in time seems unnatural as it shows an instant not usually seen. They used the science of photography to pause time making it a “science of manipulation and isolation to create an unfamiliarity we recognise, and yet something utterly unlike, foreign, strange.” [E Gertsaki] (S Koop, 1997) Contemporary photographers of today use the same method to produce striking images that make the viewer stop and question what is happening in the image. Lois Greenfield, contemporary dance photographer, is an example of such an artist. Greenfield’s images capture movement otherwise unseen by the human eye, using fast shutter speeds of up to 1/500 of a second and a flash at 1/2000 of a second. She captures a delicate, unique photographic movement in time that only lasts for a 500th of a second. “She seeks to capture the frames of life that naturally transpire before the final goal is reached, the frames that are invisible to the naked eye” (Milesky & Robinson 2002)
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| Lois Greenfield, David Parsons (2003) |
Greenfield has been part of a dance performance called Held where she is on stage freezing moments 1/2000 of a second, which are instantaneously projected onto a screen behind the dancers. The performance, choreographed by Garry Stewart, is about “photography, time and perceptions of reality”. It plays with the notion of capturing a tiny moment in time unable to be seen without assistance making the moment a reality. Juxtaposing the fixed images of Greenfield’s with the fast, violent dance routine and revealing to the audience the unseen aspects of the movements, ”a moment that exists beneath the threshold of perception”. (Kinetz, 2005)
Greenfield originally experimented with blurred images to suggest movement, however eventually went the opposite way saying she is “interested in slicing the moment very thin”. This is what gives her images a sense of wonderment. They raise deliberate questions in the viewer, as did Edgerton’s images. Such questions as, how will he land? How did he get there? The dancers seem to defy gravity as the shutter speed is fast and creates no blur also giving them an illusion of weightlessness. Blur in a photo conveys movement. Without blur the images look static making the subject look immobile. People believe what they see as true, nonetheless they are presented with something familiar yet looks unfamiliar. “I’m always looking for something that is going to confound the viewer. It’s about creating a mystery” (Greenfield, 2005)
Howard Schatz is another example of a contemporary artist using a fast shutter speed to capture people in flight, caught in a moment. His dance photographs, like Greenfield and Edgerton, conjure questions in his viewers as the models are caught in unknown positions in the air. Capturing beautiful, unique images otherwise unseen by the naked eye. Schatz also experiments in the other direction with his action photography. Unlike his dance photography, his action photography is similar in aesthetics to Edgerton’s stroboscopic images. The use of repetition in the image gives it its sense of movement. Unlike his and Greenfield’s dance photographs, which have been frozen in time and look unsettling and at times disturbing to the viewer, the action strobe exposed images being repeated, provide movement without blur in the same way Edgerton’s images do. The similarities in technique can be seen in Schatz’s motion study #1036. The subject has been exposed multiple times to create overlapping images of slightly different positions allowing for details of the movement to be seen.
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Howard Schatz, Motion Study #1036 |
Motion blur has long been something that had to be avoided, beginning with the daguerreotype images that used head and body clamps to restrict movement due to long exposure times making a blurred image, to the use of fast shutter speed cameras, and strobe flash to capture the smallest moment in time without blur. However, deliberate motion blur can be effective in an aesthetic approach to stop images looking unnatural. Wings on birds, waterfalls, night city lights and sports photography are common subjects photographed with a slower shutter speed to convey motion. Photographers and artists even go as far as to add motion blur in postproduction to prevent images looking artificial and to give a sense of movement or to make an object stand out from it’s background.
Sports photography is one aspect of photography that usually goes in this direction, different to earlier concepts. Slower shutter speeds are used to provide deliberate motion blur of either the background or the subject so as to give a sense of movement in the image. One example of such photography is Jerry Lodriguss’ Tennis photograph of Pete Sampras. The ball and face is still and in focus while the background and player is blurred. This blur suggests the movement of the swing, accentuating action and capturing this moment in time.
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Jerry Logriguss, Tennis- Pete Sampras (1992) |
Moving water such as waterfalls, often looks unnatural if photographed with too fast a shutter speed, whereas using a slower shutter speed gives the image a softer impression that isn’t stiff or out of place. This can also be applied to night photography. A lot of photographers who take night photographs use long exposures to give the image warmth or movement. Katrin Eismann is an example of a night photographer. In her Enjoying Long Exposures series and New York Seens she exploits this technique, using long exposure times of street and city scenes. The subjects in these photographs are almost unrecognisable. They are purely abstract, artistic shots that give a sense of movement by using deliberate motion blur.
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Katrin Eismann, NY Seens 28 |
Rick Sammon is a contemporary photographer who retouches his photos in photoshop adding motion blur to his images to suggest movement. His original images show a static image of his subject. After he has retouched the image in Photoshop adding motion blur, the image is instantly given an impression of action. For example, Sammons before and after photograph of an eagle shows how initially the bird looks almost frozen, which is unfamiliar to the viewer. Because of this the viewer is presented with an image that looks a little peculiar, however, after he adds motion blur to the bird’s wings and the background, the image at once looks more like it is in flight and prevents it looking strange to the viewer’s eye.
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Rick Sammon, Eagle |
It is ironic that throughout the history of photography artists and technicians have looked for possible techniques to avoid motion blur in an image, experimenting and developing new technologies of recording reality, to in turn have contemporary photographers deliberately incorporate blur in an image and even to artificially add blur in postproduction. Faster cameras and development of faster films, not only have answered scientific questions and helped in discoveries of movement and time but have also opened an opportunity for photographer’s creative choice. The choice to use an extremely fast shutter speed to eliminate motion blur and achieve a “pure” photograph, in the words of the f64 group, or deliberately use a slower shutter speed to give certain subjects softness and a sense of movement. With a fast shutter speed, photographers can obtain wonderment in their images and influence the viewer who questions these sharp images of objects in motion. Photographers also have the choice to deliberately use motion blur with a longer shutter speed or even add motion blur in postproduction to either stop images looking unnatural or as an artistic effect. Motion in photography has played a large role in the history of photography influencing the way artists and photographers have thought about their images. The choices available to photographers through their equipment will always affect the creative potential of the medium and influence the future of photography’s development.
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