paper boat

My next assignment for photography class is movement. We have to capture something moving (person, object, animal, etc) and use a fast shutter speed, slow shutter speed and panning to get three different effects.

So I had this brilliant idea of making paper boats and I would find some water to float them down and I can do all three shots with it. Too bad there wasn't anywhere to do it. Ah, the joys of living in a concrete jungle. I was going to use the water flowing in the flood control channel, but besides it being smelly and disgusting, the plain concrete background was really boring and not very useful, especially for the panning shot. If my parents were still living in our old house I would have tied some fishing line to the boat and have my brother pull it along so it was moving, but alas, no such luck. (There are parks nearby with ponds but again, they're all filled with trash and really disgusting.)

My brother did come up with some good suggestions which I'm going to try - paper airplane and soap bubbles (with a fan to help move the bubbles along if needed). I think it would be fun trying to do a panning shot of bubbles. If it comes out right it might actually look pretty cool. Not sure how well the slow shutter shot would work out but if the fan is blowing hard enough it might work.

Thankfully we can use our digital cameras for this assignment. I know I'm going to have to look at my shots and make a lot of adjustments as I go along.

My brother had a really awesome idea but it involved fire and since there is no safe place for me to do something like that...oh well. I'm keeping the idea in my head though for another time.