If it Ain't Got That Swing Than It Don't Mean a Thing
That moment.
You feel the air swooshing over your skin. Your muscles swing with a fluid motion. Boom! Contact. Ignition. We have lift off! Then the ball is airborne - headed for orbit.
That moment when bat meets ball; club meets ball; stick meets puck… it feels so good! Especially when you know you’ve nailed it.
That moment is hard to capture. It’s like a secret that passes too quickly for the eye to catch. And the energy of the swing, the awe of the millisecond it all comes together, is a challenge to portray in a still image.
But I’m up to the challenge. :)
For Gracelyn, we tried enhancing that moment with a smoke bomb and another light lighting her from the back. But even the smoke and fury wasn’t enough to express the power of her swing.
So I decided to make a stroboscopic mural - basically take a picture as fast as I could get my light to flash and combine the images in photoshop. You can see that process in the animation below.
The original photos were taken on location. I shot senior portraits on her home golf course right here in central Michigan.
I really like this effect. I remember when I was a kid looking through children’s science books. I loved looking at the pictures that showed layers of action. Back then, the effect was created in-camera. The photographer had to have a “strobe” flashing and each flash would leave an image in the shadows of the previous frame.
Alright, enough photography nerdery. You can check out the animation below :)
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