motion blur – Page 2

First Baptist Light Trails

The photographer captures long exposure light trails in front of Tampa’s First Baptist Church, merging urban movement with Neoclassical architecture. This duality creates an image of modernity and tradition, showcasing the church’s historical significance against dynamic traffic patterns. The piece illustrates Tampa’s evolving identity, emphasizing beauty in its urban landscapes through innovative techniques.

Long exposure nighttime photograph of the historic First Baptist Church in Tampa, Florida, with vehicle light trails in the foreground. — Long exposure light trails in front of the historic First Baptist Church in downtown Tampa.

In this nocturnal study of Tampa’s historic First Baptist Church, the photographer transforms urban infrastructure into kinetic painting, employing a twenty-second exposure to capture the ceaseless motion of vehicular traffic as ribbons of light that both frame and animate the Neoclassical architecture. The resulting image operates simultaneously as documentary record and abstract composition, a duality that characterizes his most successful explorations of Florida’s urban environments.

The church itself commands the frame with dignified authority. Its illuminated dome, rendered in theatrical green uplighting, draws the eye upward through classical columns toward the cupola’s glowing clock faces. This architectural landmark, likely dating to the early twentieth century, represents Tampa’s ambitions during its period of rapid growth—a permanence and civic gravitas that contrasts sharply with the ephemeral streaks of red and white light that sweep through the foreground. The photographer has chosen an exposure duration that allows traffic to complete its passage through the intersection, creating continuous trails rather than fragmented segments, a decision that required both technical precision and patience in timing.

The technical execution reveals careful calibration of competing priorities. The f/20 aperture serves multiple functions: it extends the exposure time necessary to capture substantial light trails while creating pronounced starbursts from the streetlamps and building lights that punctuate the scene. This diffraction effect, often considered a technical liability, becomes here an expressive tool that enhances the image’s sense of urban energy and nocturnal luminosity. The ISO 160 setting represents a pragmatic compromise, maintaining clean shadow detail without the noise that would emerge at higher sensitivities during a twenty-second exposure.

What distinguishes this work within the Florida Landscapes & Cityscapes chapter is its engagement with the state’s urban identity—a counterpoint to the natural environments that dominate popular conceptions of Florida photography. Tampa, often overshadowed by Miami’s architectural flash or Orlando’s manufactured spectacle, possesses a layered history visible in buildings like this repurposed church structure, now apparently serving commercial functions while retaining its ecclesiastical form. The photographer documents this transformation without nostalgia or critique, allowing the juxtaposition of classical architecture and contemporary traffic patterns to speak to ongoing urban evolution.

The composition demonstrates sophisticated spatial organization. The church occupies the middle ground with centered dignity, while the light trails sweep diagonally from lower right to left, creating dynamic movement that prevents the symmetrical architecture from becoming static. Flanking buildings and street trees provide contextual depth, establishing the church within its urban fabric rather than isolating it as a monument. The streetlamp at left edge, its starburst perfectly rendered, serves as a visual anchor that balances the compositional weight of the church’s mass.

Within his broader photographic journey, this image represents an expansion of the long-exposure vocabulary established in his Bay Pier work. Where that earlier piece explored natural elements transformed by time, here he applies similar temporal techniques to the urban realm, revealing how extended duration can render the chaos of city traffic as elegant abstraction. The photograph succeeds in making visible the patterns underlying apparent disorder, suggesting that beauty in Florida’s built environments requires not different locations but altered ways of seeing—a perspective shift measured in seconds rather than miles.

The Zipper: Temporal Geometry in Motion

Greg Urbano’s photograph of the Zipper ride at a Florida carnival uniquely transforms the concept of landscape photography. By capturing swirling light trails during twilight, it emphasizes the intersection of cultural and physical landscapes. The image reveals the dynamic nature of our experiences, illustrating how ephemeral entertainment shapes collective identity in Florida.

Long exposure photograph of the Zipper carnival ride at night, creating circular light trails in vivid colors with people standing below. — Long exposure night view of the Zipper ride creating swirling light trails at a carnival.

Within Chapter 2 of Greg Urbano’s Top 100 Journey, this carnival ride photograph stands as a compelling exploration of how Florida’s cultural landscape extends beyond its natural and architectural features into the realm of ephemeral entertainment. The image captures the Zipper in full rotation during twilight hours, transforming a traveling carnival attraction into a blazing mandala of light and motion that challenges traditional notions of what constitutes a “landscape.”

The photographer’s technical execution is precise and purposeful. Working with a Nikon D610 at 18mm, he has employed a six-second exposure at f/22 and ISO 100 to record not the ride itself, but rather the luminous trace of its movement through space. This approach fundamentally alters the subject’s visual character—what would typically appear as a stationary mechanical structure becomes instead a dynamic sculptural form composed entirely of light trails. The concentric circles of orange, red, and yellow fire outward from a brilliant white core, creating a hypnotic pattern that suggests both solar imagery and abstract expressionist painting.

The compositional framework demonstrates sophisticated spatial awareness. The ride occupies the central position, its circular motion perfectly framed against a deepening blue sky where storm clouds gather at the horizon. Silhouetted figures stand before the ticket booth in the immediate foreground, their stillness providing human scale and anchoring the viewer’s perspective. These stationary forms create a deliberate counterpoint to the violent spinning above them, emphasizing through contrast the temporal nature of the photographer’s chosen exposure duration.

Environmental context enriches the reading of this work. The characteristic Florida palm trees visible at right, the flat terrain, and the quality of the twilight atmosphere all ground the image firmly within the state’s visual vocabulary. Additional carnival rides glow at the periphery—including what appears to be a carousel and swing ride—establishing this as a comprehensive documentation of Florida’s traveling fair culture, a seasonal tradition that punctuates small-town life across the state.

What makes this photograph particularly significant within the Landscapes & Cityscapes chapter is its conceptual expansion of both terms. The photographer argues implicitly that Florida’s landscape includes not only its physical geography but also its temporal and cultural topography—the fairs, festivals, and itinerant amusements that transform ordinary municipal parks into spaces of collective experience. This is landscape photography that acknowledges human activity not as intrusion but as essential component.

The technical choices support this interpretation. The narrow aperture has rendered the background rides and architectural elements with acceptable sharpness while creating prominent starbursts on individual light points—a decorative effect that paradoxically enhances rather than diminishes the image’s documentary authenticity. The relatively brief six-second exposure has captured sufficient motion to abstract the Zipper into pure pattern while maintaining enough detail in the stationary elements to preserve spatial legibility.

In positioning this work alongside more conventional Florida landscapes within his broader project, the photographer demonstrates an inclusive vision of place-making. Here, the spectacular is found not in natural grandeur or architectural monumentality, but in the democratic pleasure of a county fair at dusk—a quintessentially American scene rendered with technical sophistication and genuine respect for its subject matter.

Fubbles: The Ephemeral Made Eternal

The photograph “Fubbles,” taken in 2014 by Greg Urbano at Fort de Soto Park, captures a soap bubble mid-flight, showcasing early artistic vision. Enhanced by motion blur, it elevates the bubble into fine art, revealing themes of transformation and impermanence. Urbano’s technical choices demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of photography and artistry.

Large elongated soap bubble stretching through the air against a cloudy sky, photographed with a Nikon D5100 and 35mm lens at high shutter speed. — This photograph captures a long, tube‑shaped soap bubble drifting through the air against a cloudy sky at Fort De Soto Park in Florida. The bubble’s reflective surface and fluid form create an abstract, fine‑art appearance, with motion blur added during post‑processing to enhance the sense of movement. The image was taken on July 27, 2014 using a Nikon D5100 with a 35mm lens at ƒ/6.3, 1/1250s, ISO 100. It is part of the Top 100 Journey project and represents early experimental work exploring motion, shape, and atmospheric minimalism.

In the opening chapter of Greg Urbano’s photographic journey, “Fubbles” stands as a remarkable testament to the artist’s early instinct for transforming the mundane into the sublime. Created in 2014 during an afternoon at Fort de Soto Park, this image captures far more than a simple bubble in flight—it reveals an emerging photographer’s understanding of light, form, and the delicate boundary between documentation and fine art.

The composition presents a soap bubble mid-flight, its translucent membrane caught in a state of graceful distortion. What immediately strikes the viewer is the dreamlike quality of the motion blur, which Urbano candidly notes was enhanced in post-processing. This creative decision speaks to an important aspect of his early development: the willingness to move beyond strict documentary realism toward a more interpretive visual language. The blur transforms the bubble from a fleeting childhood toy into something altogether more ethereal—a meditation on impermanence itself.

Shot with a Nikon D5100 at 35mm, the technical execution demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of exposure for such translucent subjects. The aperture of f/6.3 provides sufficient depth while maintaining the isolation of the bubble against the softly rendered background. Most significantly, the shutter speed of 1/1250s at ISO 100 captures crystalline detail in the bubble’s surface, preserving the swirling patterns and subtle gradations that give the sphere its otherworldly quality. These technical choices reveal an artist already thinking beyond the moment of capture to the final image.

The monochromatic palette proves essential to the photograph’s success. By stripping away color, Urbano directs our attention to form, texture, and tonal relationships. The bubble’s translucent skin becomes a study in graduated grays, while the blurred background creates a tonal symphony that could easily hang beside the work of mid-century modernist photographers. This treatment elevates a whimsical subject matter into the realm of fine art abstraction.

Within the context of “Chapter 1 — Beginnings,” this photograph occupies a fascinating position. It demonstrates that even in his earliest work, Urbano possessed the vision to see artistic potential in unexpected places. The playful title “Fubbles” maintains a connection to the image’s origins—fun with bubbles—while the execution reveals serious artistic ambitions. This duality between playfulness and sophistication would become a hallmark of his developing style.

The photograph also speaks to broader themes of transformation and transience. A soap bubble exists for mere seconds before bursting, yet through photography, Urbano arrests that moment, preserving what cannot be preserved. The enhanced motion blur serves not as deception but as emphasis, amplifying the sense of temporal fluidity that defines the bubble’s brief existence. In this way, the image becomes metaphorical—a meditation on photography itself as the art of stopping time.

For viewers encountering Urbano’s work through his Top 100 Journey project, “Fubbles” offers essential insight into his artistic foundations. Here is a photographer unafraid to experiment, willing to blend capture with creation, and possessed of an eye that finds beauty in the transient and overlooked. The bubble, forever frozen in its graceful dissolution, invites us to reconsider our own relationship with impermanence and the extraordinary potential hidden within ordinary moments.