Camera secrets of Hollywood : simplified photography for the home picture maker (1931)

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use of a tripod, because with camera in hand, the body can take up some of the vibration and movement of the boat itself. In photographing a bird in flight, or an aeroplane, a train, or a car going by, or a horserace1, you will get your best pictures by the camera following the object, keeping the moving objects always in the picture, this being oik1 of the times when it is right to pan or tilt. When tin1 Akeley tripod came into use, for instance, in following a group of horses around a track, it showed strikingly how much more effective were tin1 scenes than those in which the galloping horses merely entered the picture at the left and passed through the field of vision. We have already noted that in making moving objects, it is well to have them coming toward the camera, and while doing so it is usually preferable to have them approaching at an angle instead of directly toward the lens. And you will find that if they approach from the left, rather than from the right, the result will be generally more satisfactory. This method will avoid blurring and retain better composition in the picture. This is well illustrated in Scene 49, page 44, a striking example of this method of photographing moving things. This pic* ture has about everything to be desired ; the best angle, the catching of a graceful horse at the height of the jump, a fine cross light, the focal point of interest centered well, and stirring action in every sense of the Avord. Everyone, of course, realizes that water is one of the elements which easily lends action to landscape, but they sometimes fail to realize that this same action value can be secured from the sky, as illustrated in Scene 53, page 47, where a blizzard is coming full tilt from behind the clouds. The photographer in this case has caught the moving feeling of the scene from the wind-blown trees in the foreground which give action to the clouds in the background and carry the full force of the1 approaching violence of the storm. We should always keep before us the fact that composition is one of the primary principles of photography, and it is through composition that Ave can emphasize action in both still pictures and movies. [45 1