Remember to visit http://www.pwassignments.com after you complete the assignment and
share your favorite photo! It’s a community of enthusiastic photographers and a great
place to view what other readers have created. You can also post comments and read
encouraging suggestions and feedback.Assignment
Freeze the action
This assignment is about using a shutter speed that is high enough to freeze the action, so I
decided to use this image of guitarist Mark Karan playing at a local club as my example. Once
you complete the assignment, don’t forget to post your image on the website to share.
Getting a shutter speed high enough to freeze the action is challenging in very low-light situa-
tions, which was the case at the club where I took this photo. I waited until Mark pulled the guitar
up and held the note for a moment, which allowed me to use a slower shutter speed of 1/100
second because he was not moving very much during that moment. Because flash was not
allowed and a tripod would have been in the way, I handheld this shot, pushed the ISO to 1600,
and opened the lens up to f/2.5. The lens had a maximum aperture of f/2.0 but I felt that the
depth of field at f/2.0 would have been too shallow. This image was converted to black and white
in postproduction because the high ISO caused the image to look murky and the conversion
helped to alleviate the negative effects of the digital noise and the odd colored lights.
Remember the factors that go into picking the right shutter speed to freeze a moment: the direc-
tion of the movement, the speed of the movement, the distance of the movement, and the
importance of the movement.