Most of attempts to theorize photography have focused on how it stops time, and the ways in which a photograph can associate motion with a non-moving image. Photographers can use a long exposure to visualize motion within the frame. They can stop an object within a field of movement, stilling something within a world of activity.
Or they can snap a picture with a fast shutter and freeze something in the act of moving, showing us something that our eyes don’t see and yet that we are fully aware is there. The photographer reveals something we’ve known all along but have never seen for itself. It’s what Eadweard Muybridge accomplished first all those years ago, showing us what horses and humans looked like as they ran.
It’s a commonplace achievement now but of all the things a photo can do that feel both real and uncanny, a frozen motion is the most delightful to me when I accomplish it. I rarely set out with a camera on a fast shutter looking for moving subjects, not the least because that requires a lot of light, so my successes along these lines feel more precious than they might to a dedicated nature or sports photographer.
Perhaps because I have a sense that a good photo of this kind is serendipitous, most of my conscious attempts to freeze a fast motion have been sort of lame—blowing a huge number of leaves in the air in order to try and capture the look of leaves falling from trees in the autumn, for example. The only success in this respect is hanging out with a subject whose organic, spontaneous motions are also completely repeatable, like a dog playing fetch on the stairs.