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If you can imagine a timelapse video of a person stood on a busy high street, the person is stood still whilst the people move around him very fast. We have all seen that done right? Now how could i capture that style in one single image?

 

The idea is to take multiple shots of said person stood still, but i want the image to show people walking past with motion blur. I want the blurred people to be faded into the image.

 

Would i just stack the images up and then mask out the bits I dont want? Or is there a way to stack the images all in one with different opacity levels for each image?

 

Does any of that actually make sense? :)

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Which photo editing software are you using?

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i'm using photoshop.

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Not sure but can you not use slow synch flash for this

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Difficult to do in a single image in camera but can be done, you will need find the balance between long exposure and keeping the people bright enough in the frame to not render as ghosts. I've done things like this in the past with people at stations etc where all the travellers are blurred, as long as your subject stays perfectly still they will be sharp and the people blurred. It's a case of trial and error I think start at 1/10th a second and work towards longer exposures and see what happens.

 

You can do this in photoshop like in the video above but will find it difficult to only blur the people and not the scene behind the people...

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I'm not quite sure i get what you mean, do you mean something like the main picture on my link - http://www.glassboxphotography.co.uk/portfolio/commercial/ If so you could do it on one photo if the street is busy enough, you will obviously have to use a tripod, but like said above get the subject to remain very still and you will have to play around with shutter speeds to get the right motion blur, also set your f number very low and just fucused on the main subject if you want everyone else to be blury inc background, it might be that a prime lens might be better for this shoot as lower f no's, depends how much blur you want etc.

 

Good luck!

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You could try with an ND 3.0 (Neutral Density) filter, think sunglasses for cameras, or some Green Welding Mask Glass, which is much cheaper.

 

Take one picture with the ND filter, then another of the static subject. Then in photoshop make one the background, and the ND picture as a layer. Use the eraser to insert your person into the picture.

 

Or get your subject to stand really still....

 

Here are a couple I did with using Welding Mask Glass a couple of years ago:

4629303175_f61c6ab8d4_z.jpg

waiting for the tram to pass

 

4601264195_b9dc50d3d6_z.jpg

Outside Hallam University

 

They're green from the Glass, this can be removed by adjusting the white balance, but I liked the green.

 

K.

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Thanks for the responses!

 

i managed it in the end. Very similar to that image Glassbox, but instead i wanted many more people.

 

I decided to take a picture of the subject with no other people in shot. Then i took another 20-30 images of people walking past with a very slow shutter speed which achieved the amount of ghosting i required. I then simply masked eached image to just show the ghost and layered them all together with various opacity levels. The end result was perfect and I created exactly what i had in mind. It did take quite a few hours and ended up with one very slow Macbook!

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I will do, but cant at the moment. The image is for a magazine so im restricted from posting the image for now. But once the magazine goes out ill out it up.

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