09 Nov 09: Shutter speeds/ Sodium lighting

Historically in art galloping horses were generally depicted incorrectly as can be seen in this picture "Acteon beating Memnon...1826" by John Frederick Herring Snr

In the 1870's there was much debate over whether all four of a horses hooves left the ground at the same time. The photographer Eadward Muybridge was hired to settle the matter. He designed a system using a series of cameras, set 21 inches apart, arranged parallel to a track with trip wires to trigger each camera. The series of images taken called "The Horse in Motion" shows that all four hooves do leave the ground together but not with the legs fully extended forward and back as contemporary artists believed:

As part of our systems and processes assignment we are required to "use high shutter speeds to freeze action and slow shutter speeds for motion blur effects". We also have to take location photographs under various light conditions including sodium lights. Sodium lighting is commonly used for street lights and gives off a characteristic orange glow. I decided to kill two birds with one stone and try to take some action shots of a horse in an indoor riding school. This was not quite on the same scale as Muybridge’s shoot.

In taking my shots I discovered some difficulties in shooting under sodium lighting in the indoor school. As I had found, when I took pictures of Blackpool Illuminations, images taken with sodium lighting really can come out totally orange.  Adjusting the aperture and shutter speed can help to solve the problem.
Starting with the aperture set at f/8.0 I initially found the lighting was too orange:

In order to correct this I adjusted the aperture, however, I then found that at slower shutter speeds I didn't get enough light into the camera and just got a very dark photo in which it was almost impossible to make out the horse.

After a bit of trial and error, I finally settled on a shutter speed 1/30 sec at f/5.6 to freeze the action and the same shot was then adjusted for white balance in Lightroom2 to give a more natural lighting effect and better clarity:

I then slowed the shutter speed to 1/4 sec to get blurred motion (again the white balance has been adjusted using Lightroom 2):

Finally I tried a shutter speed of 1 sec which produced a real ghosting effect:

Unfortunately, at this point we had to end the shoot as we had no more time in the school. I have started to learn a lot about shooting under sodium light and how to correct images for lighting issues using Lightroom2. I aim to go back and work more on shutter speeds to try and capture motion without such a strong ghosting effect.