Fast Moving Targets

Want to shoot a fast moving target but don’t know how?? Read on, there are a few options!! I get asked this question all the time, and unfortunately there isn’t a single good answer I can give you. Shooting fast moving targets may require a variety of methods, and is driven entirely by the end result you are looking for. Rather than give you one theoretical answer, I thought I would provide some actual examples instead.

First, what are you trying to achieve? Knowing what the outcome is supposed to look like goes a long way to determining the best method to use. For example, trying to capture a bullet or arrow in mid-flight requires a very different method to capturing a water splash or a leaping person!!

Second, what equipment do you have available to you? I realise that good photography isn’t about the tech, but for fast moving subjects your life will be much easier if you have some tech options available to you!! For example, high speed strobes are good for stopping motion, while sound triggers are good for explosive events (balloon pops, bullet time, etc)

Third, what location are you working in? The location is very important, because fast moving targets will be harder to catch if you have less control over the environment. For example, much better control is possible in a studio vs outside.

At this stage you are probably rolling your eyes – I haven’t answered anything, and I’m just being vague!! And you’d be right, sorry about that!! So here are a couple of real life examples to get you thinking:

This is Leigh, fully airborne. Timing this shot was never going to be easy manually, so I used a pair of laser triggers to catch Leigh at the top of his jump. In this case, when his high hand broke the beams, the camera took the shot!! I can provide readers more info on laser triggers and how to use them if you are interested, just note me!!

This image was created specifically for the 2008 Canon Photo5 competition. The concept was simple – I wanted to “explode” the red ribbons (which were the theme) out of a terracotta pot, making it look like a newly bloomed “party plant”. In order to create the explosion, I used party poppers from the supermarket in a non-standard way, which gave me the punch I needed to launch the ribbons and glitter (and that’s about all I can write about that, buy me a coffee and I might tell you a bit more!!)

Unlike Leigh above, laser triggers were not an option because there was not enough predictability that the beams would be broken at the right time, or right height/form. And the speed was much faster than a jumping person, so a different approach was required. I actually had three options with this one, as follows:

• Use a sound trigger to capture the noise of the explosion, and set the camera shooting a high speed burst of multiple images; or
• Use a sound trigger to capture the noise, but shoot in bulb mode and have the flashes cycle at high speed; or
• Manually trigger the camera on high speed sync, right across the period of the explosion.

In the end it was the last option I actually used, but my preference would have been the option 1 – but at the time I did this concept, I did not own a sound trigger!! Hence, the main driver was using what I had! But assuming I could use all three options, what outcomes would they have given me?

For the first option, the sound trigger would have been handy because it would have set off the camera at exactly the right time, but not really done much else. For the second option, the resulting images would have been completely different, as bulb mode would have resulted in multiple exposures in a single frame (assuming no high-speed sync driven by the strobes). It would have been a trippy effect, but not what I was after in this case.

The third option was not as effective or efficient as the first, but only really resulted in a stack of extra images I could discard. If I was shooting film, option 1 would have been mandatory. With digital, I can afford to be a little inefficient!! If you are interested, here’s the setup and video I took of one of the takes (and yes, Kings of Leon were on pretty loud that day!!)