I wanted to do something a bit different with Requirement 3 so I thought of making an exaggerated background movement with a stationary subject like the kind you see in cartoons when foes are rushing towards each other. To do this I brought my friends to the woody area by MemAud and Hoover Tower (really nice at sunset!). I asked one of them (Alex) to pose in some of his Wushu positions and then asked my other friend to act as a light stand.

She was standing very close camera left holding my wireless flash and shining it at Alex through a large round light diffuser. I then got very close to Alex’s fist and composed him at my lenses widest focal length of 18mm to exaggerate his fist. I then started with my lens zoomed in and quickly zoomed it to all the way wide while the shutter was open. I used rear-flash sync to make sure Alex was flashed at the end of zoom when he was biggest and where I composed him.

Alex is in a very shadowy area so his motion blur during the zoom was easily overwhelmed by the flash so he appears sharp. Meanwhile, the background consists of sunlight peaking through branches and is much brighter. The sunlight through the branches turned into streaks and maintained their brightness throughout the zoom which gives the illusion of movement and makes it seem like Alex is punching at hyperspeed.

The camera settings consisted mostly of just getting manipulating the background because I knew Alex would be sharp from the flash and so I only really needed to worry about the background. Since it was getting darker I knew that I just needed to have lots of light, and also that a blurred background would streak better so I used aperture priority at the lowest F-number I could get.

The camera calculated 1/20 shutter speed which was more than enough time for a good zoom. I kept ISO at 100. There was no image processing done on this photo.

This photo meets requirement 3 because the foreground is sharp while the background is motion blurred.