Motion Portraiture

Ree Ja

This image was captured a while back during my session with Ree Ja. I have come to love this image and concept and am looking to continue on a series of portraits based on this idea of motion.

Back in June I had posted another from this motion set with Ree Ja. That image looks more like motion than this one but what I love about this is the sense of two portraits emerging from the soul of the subject at once. I feel a better sense of understanding of the subject by way of seeing mulitple sides, a sense of the subjects movement and two different poses and expressions/moods emerging. It obviously has a weird factor about it which I like very much. . .a pleasantly strange perspective.

The setting was a 1 second exposure with camera mounted on a tripod. Aperture was around 13 with an ISO setting of 125.

Ree Ja and I briefly rehearsed a flow of movement that she was to begin at the start of the exposure during which I manually fired off two strobe bursts to freeze those moments. Having experimented with various camera settings, I found these numbers to give me the effect and look I was after.
However, light positioning, distance of subject from background, etc all have an effect on the outcome and those variables I did not record so my next attempt at this will begin another series of preliminary experiments and testing.

This is certainly not a new concept by any means, but I really have not seen it used much in this way. I actually stumbled upon this idea as I was experimenting for artist David Kassan who had hired me to shoot his portrait for which he wanted to use to paint a self portrait. He wanted his motion captured and so in the process of working to achieve these effects I came to really like the look and sense of "implied motion" from the mulitple strobe bursts.

I have some more projects and subjects coming up in the near future and so I'm looking forward to continue to work on this and add to the series.

Best wishes for a healthy and prosperus New Year!