A Personal Photo Challenge - Movement

It’s time for A Personal Photo Challenge! “Movement” is the theme this month.

I managed to take all new photos for this challenge and not dip into my archives. I usually don’t try to capture movement, so it was a bit of a trial to complete the assignment.

Due to eyesight difficulties, I have been largely unsuccessful in capturing sharp images of hummingbirds this year. But I have managed to capture a few. Because of the location of my staged hummingbird perch, I usually reserve photo shoots during late afternoon hours for some beautiful side lighting. To help capture lightning-fast changes in posture, I set my camera on continuous shooting mode. Then, I ruthlessly cull through and delete unacceptable files. Luckily, I was able to catch a bird sticking out it long tongue, and the tongue has a beautiful motion blur to emphasize the speed. (Click on the photo to see it bigger.)

During my hummingbird photo shoots, I sometimes find that wild rabbits will visit near the edge of our yard to feast on a patch of clover in the adjacent lot. If the hummingbirds aren’t visiting the perch, I point my camera over to the rabbits. After reviewing the various shots of the rabbits, I realized that I had captured sequential movements thanks to the continuous shooting mode set on the camera. It was a light bulb moment. I could create animated gif files for this photo challenge!

I discovered that it was a tedious job to create gif files in Photoshop CC. Perhaps it is a bit easier in Photoshop Elements. I don’t know. I had to post-process each of the photo files before combining, and the editing had to be identical. (I don’t do minor edits. They are always extensive because I shoot in RAW format, not jpeg.) There is a special way to combine the photos too, so that each photo layer lines up perfectly. (My shots were handheld, so they didn’t automatically line up.) However, I was able to break new ground in learning some new techniques and met my personal challenge head on. And, Marty, my irrepressible blog greeter rabbit, was quite pleased and amused by the results.

This rabbit scratch sequence was created with three individual photo files. (If you don't initially see movement, click directly on the image.)

And this rabbit twitch sequence was created with two files.

I hope you enjoyed my photos and descriptions. Please visit A Personal Photo Challenge blog and check out the creative efforts of other participants too!