Darkest day of the year: don't fight the blur

Stick, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Yesterday I had a disappointing time with photography, trying to get sharp photos although the day was dark even at noon. And it so happens that now on Sunday is the shortest - perhaps also the darkest - day of the year. Least daylight hours, and also a thick cloud cover.

I went for a short walk with the children, and tried to use the blur for a good effect. And it worked surprisingly well when taking photos of the children. I had even difficulties in deciding what photos to store in the "family album" in iPhoto.

Of course, when taking motion-blurred photos the failure rate is high, but this just needs to be taken into account. Some of the photos had excactly the right sharp area - for example the face - and everything else was abstracted away by the blur.

Here is one photo from today, which I feel has nicely a bit of detail combined with the blurred shapes and colors. I didn't post-process the photo at all except for a bit of cropping.