Blurry Not Necessarily A Bad Thing

When I first saw these shots I'd taken at  Pro Bull Riding Rodeo I was irritated.  What a waste.  I'd just taken hundreds of blurry photos.  I'd gotten all of my settings on my camera wrong.

I put them in a folder on my computer and probably would have trashed them had I been organized.  I'm not organized and am for once, glad.

The other day, I was looking through old photos and came across these.  I saw them with a new perspective. I may be the only one who sees them this way but I decided that blurry isn't necessarily a bad thing!

Blurry, means motion.  Blurry is capturing the motion.  Obviously I'm not a photographer and know nothing about photography and these photos aren't fantastic but.......  here's my point:

The motion.  We see the bull and rider coming out of the chute.  Look at the guy on the right who is in motion.  He's just opened the gate for the bull and rider and is now getting the heck out of dodge.  Those who are somewhat a tidge more in focus are the cowboys in back watching.

Here's where it gets cool to me.  The center of the bull and the rider are more in focus than the head and feet of the bull.  His hind feet especially.  You can see where all of the motion is.

Here you can see even though the rider looks like he is going to fall off, he's more in focus than the moving bull.

And now...... you can hardly see the rider as he is thrown through the air.  Another figure in blurry motion is the guy in yellow on the right coming in to save the rider.  The clown.

Here's another rider.  Hand up in the air.  He's sitting relatively centered on the bull.

I absolutely love this shot.  Here is a bull that you can tell is in full motion and the rider has very little blur as the bull is whipping around.

Another favorite shot.  Look at this bull!  The swirl of paint as he is twisting and turning and leaping and the rider is still in pretty good focus compared to the bull.

Now notice something.  The rider starts to get a bit blurrier.  He's moving more now with the bull.  His bum is no longer planted firmly to the bull's back on top of his hand and rope.

You guessed it.  He's lost his center of balance.  Off he goes. 

Check out this bull rider.  This photo cracks me up.  The horns look like ears.  Like the bull and rider are flying through the air like Dumbo.

Lots of motion..... both bull and rider.

This rider has too much motion.

Off he goes.......

Another favorite set of shots.  Bull in motion...... rider centered and not as blurry.

Can't even see the head of this bull there is so much motion!

Look at this shot!  Where is the bull?  The rider looks like he is sitting on a polka dotted dust cloud!

I guess you needed to have grown up around this stuff but to me it is beautiful to see such athletes.  Both the bulls and the riders.

Have you seen enough now to know what is going to happen?

The rider gets blurry and is in as much motion as the bull............  off he comes. 

  

So, next time you take a bunch of action/motion photos and they turn out blurry, don't delete them and throw them away.  Put them in a folder, let some time past, and go back and look at them with fresh eyes.  You never know what you may find.  You just may find a photo of a bull rider trying to outrun a bull as it tries to launch him up in the air by his hind end!