Photos 6 – Bannack – Action Blur & Freeze

The magic of shutter speed is on display with these photos: capturing “ghosts” and bandits!

To create “A Ghost at Bannack,” I simply made the shutter very long and then had the model leave the shot about halfway through the exposure. I used Shutter Priority mode to take the shot. Yes, it’s a fake ghost shot, but it’s an easy to do one technique. In post, I adjusted the image in Adobe Camera Raw and added burned edges.

One of the stories we had in mind when shooting “Bannack Bandits” was that there were some bandits escaping from the back of a truck. I used a very high shutter speed in shutter priority mode and continuous shooting to capture them while they were still in mid-air. I adjusted levels both in Photoshop and in Adobe Camera Raw.

Of course, most ghost shots out in the wild are not of well-defined figures. The model exited the shot too soon in this one, but when I looked back at the photos I saw that it made for a lot of whispiness and a few points that look like parts of a ghost’s body. I applied the same adjustments to this one that I did to “A Ghost at Bannack.”