Shutter Speeds

At Telford town park, I found a bright coloured and uniquely shaped swing that I thought would make a suitable subject for the exercise on shutter speeds. I set my camera on a tripod, and kept my kit lens at a fixed focal length of 18mm for all the images. I used the shutter priority setting on my camera in order to choose the shutter speeds I wanted whilst allowing the camera to make adjustments in other areas to maintain a constant exposure.

18mm, f/4, 1/1250, ISO 400

18mm, f/5, 1/800, ISO 400 

 18mm, f/7.1, 1/400, ISO 400

 18mm, f/14, 1/100, ISO 400

 18mm, f/22, 1/40, ISO 400

18mm, f/22, 1/20, ISO 200

 18mm, f/22, 1/8, ISO 200

I can see when comparing the images that the slowest shutter speed where the swing is completely frozen is the third image at a shutter speed of 1/400. On the fourth image there is noticeable blurring, but not enough to properly convey motion. The fifth image is more blurred but still isn't giving the impression of motion. In the sixth image you can clearly see the swing is in motion, and probably depicts the most 'realistic' speed of all the images. The final image is more abstract and I think is possibly conveying too much motion considering that the swing wasn't moving very quickly.

Capturing motion is one of the fields in photography I have the least experience in (except for running water), perhaps I think because a suitable moving subject is more difficult to come by than a stationary one. I would have liked to experiment with even slower shutter speeds to create even more abstract images, but 1/8s was the slowest I could go without overexposing the image. If the location was closer to home I would have gone back when the light was starting to fade which means I could have gotten a slower shutter speed, but for convenience I think I'll look at the possibility of purchasing a neutral density filter which would block some of the light entering the lens thus allowing me a slower shutter speed.