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To me, one of most rewarding styles of photography is shooting action. I often find myself chasing after my dog, Cindy, taking pictures of her jumping for s tennis ball or speeding around the yard like an out of control race car. They often turn out to be some of the most amazing pictures - you capture moments your naked eye often can't see.

Capturing action can be a daunting task. It often depends on the lighting and balancing. Many of us have experienced in the past trying to snap a picture of something fast speeding by us. The results are often a blur of color streaking across the frame.

Capturing action actually makes a lot of sense once you take the theory and put it to practice. Essentially you want to capture as little movement as possible. You do this by adjusting your shutter speed.

Shutter Speed

The prime ingredient to the any action photography recipe is your shutter speed. The longer your shutter is open for (and letting light in), the more information the cameras sensor picks. The faster the shutter speed (the less time the diaphragm is open) the less information sensor will pick up. When it comes to photographing movement, the less information the better, so the faster the shutter the better.

Your shutter speed is represented by a fraction. For example: 1/100 is a very common shutter speed. When it comes to what speed is faster, 1/500 would be a faster shutter speed then 1/100.

Let's say for example, if a hockey player shoots a puck at the opposing goalie, his actions move quite quickly. It takes a split second for a player to snap the shot. If you're shutter diaphragm is open for longer then the action takes, it will show as a 'blur'. This means the camera is picking up the hockey player in all of the motion.

If you want the photograph to be sharp, you need to adjust your shutter speed to open and close faster then the hockey players movement. Generally you can easily pick up most human movements with a shutter speed of 1/200 or greater. The faster it is, the less motion blur there will be. In the case of animals or birds, you will want to use an even faster shutter speed.

Below is three tests with three different shutters speeds so you can see how the speed of the shutter effects the pictures motion:

Test #1 Shutter Speed: 1/20 F-stop: F5.6 ISO: 200 As you can clearly distinguish, the picture turned out extremely blurry. You can hardly tell, if at all, that there are two hockey players streaking down the ice with the puck. This is due to the the shutter being open for 1/20th of a second. It's picking up a lot of motion information.

Test #2 Shutter Speed: 1/100 F-stop: F3.5 ISO: 200 Though the image is much clearer, it is not completely sharp. You can still notice major motion blur. The player is traveling at the same velocity as Test #1's players though because the shutter is opening and closing at a greater speed, less information is captured.

Test #3 Shutter Speed: 1/400 F-stop: F1.8 ISO: 200 This image is clean, with very little motion blur. The shutter diaphragm is opening and closing at such a fast speed it is only capturing the quick moment. Though 1/400 is enough to capture the moment, you can still raise your shutter speed to higher volumes. 1/1000, 1/1200, or more.

Finding a happy-medium when shooting action photography takes practice. You can't always shoot at a really fast shutter speed when you are in lower light conditions. Shooting outdoors during the daytime allows for plenty of ambient light. Remember, the faster your shutter speed is, the less light is being let into the camera. You have to balance this with your aperture. If you increase your shutter speed, you also have to increase your aperture size or you will end up with a very under exposed image. You may not want everything to be completely in focus. You can achieve pretty interesting results. For example, if the person is completely sharp but the ball they are kicking is blurred out. Doing this requires you to lower your shutter speed a little but not too much. The faster the object is moving the faster the shutter speed has to keep the object sharp. The ball will be moving at a much greater rate then the person kicking it. Adjust your shutter just fast enough to keep the person sharp.

Examples

Shutter Speed: 1/500 Aperture: F3.5 (Panning) Shutter Speed: 1/1200 Aperture: F1.6