i can’t swing him very high yet.  he’s only 8.5 months and hasn’t learned to hold on to the chain.  stupid baby.  [collective gasp]

you know i am kidding.  but as we were at the park the other day, i was forced to remember how hard it is to take pictures of little people on swings.  to take picture of fast moving objects…period.  i showed a friend the above picture and she wanted to know how i was able to get him in focus and framed while in movement.  so i thought maybe you, dear internet, might want to know too.  yes?

this was one of my first attempts.  autofocus with the camera trying to decide where to focus + a semi-fast moving human = nothing worth framing.  after a few more tries and the sudden urge to kick puppies, a small (earth friendly of course) light bulb appeared over my head and i smacked my camera into “dynamic-area autofocus”.  this means i can push some buttons and tell my camera where i want the focus to be.  if you were looking through my viewfinder when i took the original image, you would have seen this:

i set my focus point in the frame of the viewfinder to the top of the frame so when he came towards me, at the highest point of his swing, i could catch him.  not only did it allow me to get the sharp focus right on his eyes, but it allowed me to frame the image exactly as i wanted.  no cropping required!

thanks for asking, friend.  thanks for reading, internet.

ps.  i don’t always get it right in the camera the first time.  it took me a good chunk of tries to get this image.  let’s be clear on that.  blurry picture featured?  case in point.  those mess ups were good practice for the final product.  much like the reality of life.  woah.  hold up.  got a little “deep” on ya there, didn’t i?

pps. [giggle]  you said “pee pee”.  [snicker]

ppps.  there.  back to normal.

pppps.  my camera was set to 320 ISO, f2.5 and 1/2000th of a second.