How to Give Clouds a Moving Effect in Photography
Moving clouds indicate or insinuate movement, direction and energy in a photo. If you are not able to capture this effect with a point and shoot camera, use the manual settings to adjust the shutter speed and exposure time. Fiddling with these settings will allow the shutter to stay open longer, which allows the camera to capture the sometimes nearly undetectable motion of clouds as they slowly roll across the sky. As you experiment with different settings, you will find your favorite ones and know which settings to apply in various environmental conditions to get the shots you desire.
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Things You'll Need
- Digital camera with manually-adjustable shutter speed and exposure settings
Instructions
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Access your digital camera’s menu settings. Navigate to the shutter speed setting.
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Set the shutter speed at two seconds. Take a picture of the sky with clouds moving across it and view the result on your camera’s view screen. Observe how much movement is noticeable in the image. If you want less movement, reduce the shutter speed. Increase the shutter speed increment for more movement. Experiment with shutter speeds of up to 25 seconds until you find the ones that you prefer for the amount of blur and motion you are trying to capture.
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Navigate through your camera’s menu settings to find the exposure settings on your camera. Manually adjust the exposure to between one and 10 minutes. Set longer exposure times for slower-moving clouds and shorter times for fast-moving clouds. Understand that setting the exposure time for at least one minute will help capture and accentuate the motion in the clouds.
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Resources
- Photo Credit Ezra Shaw/Digital Vision/Getty Images
