How I learned to love the blur.

I would delete pictures like these. If something had too much camera shake, I'd hate the picture. And then I slowly began to realize how this kind of speed blur can mean something more. It brings emotion to the shot, and adds some timey-wimey-ness to an otherwise fixed point in time.

For 2012's HubSpot Halloween costume contest, I was taking pictures of all the entrants. This shot happened as I was still setting up. I knew I had to have my light setup ready to go so I could get people through as quickly as possible. We had more than 25 people competing this time. They would walk down the makeshift catwalk, turn around, come back and then walk over to me. I had less than a minute with each person. Surely that's enough time to get a great shot for every single one, right? Well, I can try.

I used two hot lights in softboxes on camera right. The lights were stacked vertically to get even lighting from head to toe. Hey, footwear is an important part of the costume too.

Now that the lights were setup, I had to make sure my camera is dialed in. This shot was before I adjusted my camera at all. I brought up the camera to my face to frame the shot, and I hit the shutter release by accident. Still stuck on time priority, the shutter dragged and blurred the shot. Oops. Just a mistake. It's alright, it's digital so I can just delete it. But after taking a quick chimp at the shot, maybe I'll keep it instead.

Want more blur? Check this out.