Street Jousting, With Tracery

This is another in my series of 'street photos' 'Two Hours in San

Francisco' with images taken one afternoon, almost all from my car as

I drove through the city. These are Vietnames/American youths

playing outside a school. (The school administrator saw me

photographing from across the street and shooed these fun-loving boys

inside, presuming I was up to no good, but here is the proof I was

not). Your ratings and critiques are invited and most welcome. (If

you rate harshly or very critically, please submit a helpful and

constructive comment/Please share your superior knowledge to help

improve my photography.) Thanks! Enjoy! John

Modern cameras, with their ability to employ shutter speeds up to and above 1/8000th sec., allow a camera lens to be 'stopped down' here to about f 16, to allow shutter speed to be reduced, even in daylight/later afternoon shooting as here, so that the running and jousting of these playful boys would appear as 'tracery' or 'ghosting', indicating their movement.

Cartoonists frequently use 'blur' marks' around subjects to indicate motion, but just employ a few extra outline marks around, say, arms or legs, without actually blurring the limb(s) in movement.

Here is what true blur effects look like, in real life if only one's eyes were not so quick to 'stop' motion.

This image, handheld at about 1/10th of a second with non V.R. lens extended from across a wide street to 200 mm on a Nikon F-5 was achievable in part because the car motor was stopped, and in part because of the enormous weight/mass of the F-5 and the 80~200 f 2.8 lens, which did not allow for much 'shakiness' in the camera. The results rival what a V.R. lens might achieve (I had one on the front seat next to me, but overlooked it, then the school director came out and confronted me for taking photos, (without permission, he said), and shooed his children inside. Tant pis. (So much the worse, in Franch). There were wonderful more photos to be taken, and his instincts were just wrong; he didn't recognize an 'artist' at work.

John