monarch butterflies amassed in the air all flying at once against blue sky background

Photo Challenge: Showcasing Shutter Speed

As you may have read in our past article on Photography 101, understanding your camera’s shutter speed options is a tremendous way to take your photography to the next level. By using extremely fast shutter speeds, you’re able to freeze motion of even the most frenetic scenes (hundreds of soaring monarch butterflies comes to mind!). By using very slow shutter speeds, you’re able to take photos of near darkness and bring nighttime landscapes to vibrant life. By picking a shutter speed somewhere in between, you can capture the lovely blur of a rushing stream. And there are many MANY more examples just like this.

a beautiful mother grizzly bear atop a waterfall waiting for leaping salmon

This month’s challenge is “Showcasing Shutter Speed.”

How you use shutter speed (whether fast or slow or in between) is up to you, but the individual who showcases it the best is the victor – let’s see what you’ve got!

As background, for each challenge we will give you a theme or a technique to work on as a guideline. Perhaps the theme is “backyard photography” or maybe “using shallow depth of field.” Then, it’s up to you to get out there and show us what you’ve got!

Each time we announce our challenge, you’ll have a set amount of time to submit your star photo example of the challenge’s theme. Once a winner is selected, they will get a featured post on The Natural Photographer, along with commentary as to why this photo was selected. Our hope is that this will be a great learning process, using your great photos as examples of how to master various techniques.

Looking forward to seeing your entries!

We’ll accept entries until the end of the day Thursday, February 15th at midnight, at which time we’ll begin reviewing to select the winner!

UPDATE: this photo contest in now closed.  Stay tuned for a new one by checking back frequently.  Thanks!