Capturing quick motion with photography
Spray
This shot was so much fun to capture! Adding water to a product photography shot adds such a cool effect. In order to freeze the water in midair I had my settings at f/18, 2.0 shutter speed and at ISO 100. I set my camera up on a tripod, my friend held a speed light behind the root beer bottles and I sprayed a water bottle as much as I could in the time frame of the shutter being open. I raised the contrast, highlights, shadows, and blacks in post-production and voila! Capturing this motion creates an exciting mood and interest for your next product photography shot.
Sprinkle
Motion photography can add excitement to an ordinary object like fruit. Grab a spoon, stack of books, salt (since it is thicker than sugar), your favorite fruits, a tripod, a light source, and your camera. Stick the spoon into the stack of books so the part you put in your mouth is sticking out. Place your fruit on the spoon and set up your tripod in the desired location. Have someone sprinkle/pour salt over the fruit while you take multiple shots of the image. Depending on what result you want will depend on the settings. If you want more of a consistent flow then you can set your shutter speed to go a bit longer so it captures more of the motion, or you can have a quick shutter speed to capture the specks of salt bouncing off.
Set up the image as many times as you so desire! An additional tip to take your image to the next level is to add something interesting to the background. I was staying at a cabin and we had a nice warm fire in the background to create a warm glow. You can also move your light source or move to a different side of the table to get a different perspective on this motion photography technique.
Splash
The final motion photography idea involves water! You’ll need some water balloons, a needle, someone to hold the water balloon, someone to poke the water balloon and hold the speed light, a tripod, and your camera. Fill up some water balloons to about the size of a softball. Set up your tripod and have f/18, 2.5 shutter, ISO 100 for your camera settings. The long shutter is so there will be enough time for the person to hit the test button on the trigger for the flash to go off as they poke the water balloon.
Have about 10 balloons filled up because it takes a few times to get the settings and timing correct for this quick motion photography. An additional tip is to have the person holding the balloon try different hand positions in order to get different popping experiences. Have fun with this final motion photography tip and check out https://digital-photography-school.com/a-beginners-to-capturing-motion-in-your-photography/ for some additional motion photography tips.