Guest post by: Rodrigo Alvarez-Icaza
There is nothing that my three-year-old daughter Pia loves more than me spinning her around (ok, maybe chocolate). She likes to go fast and she can take over 40 turns before we go down together for a crash landing.
Mi trick for spinning so long is to focus my gaze directly on her and disregard the rest of the spinning visual field. So I just had to take a picture of exactly what I see as we are spinning around: set exposure to 1/60 to 'freeze' her face but blur the background, pre-focused manually and started spinning while looking through the viewfinder....
After each spinning session, we are both so dizzy that the game is to see who can stand on their feet first. I've never won : ).
Note: This is NOT an effect: we are really spinning. Only mild color correction, sharpening and cropping done in Photoshop.
Note 2: Don't try this technique unless you are willing to crash land with a toddler on one hand and your camera on the other.
Note 3: From the side it looks something like:
but with one hand on the camera.
![]() |
Photo by: Rodrigo Alvarez Icaza |
Exif Data:
Focal Length: 17mm
ISO: 400
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/60
Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi
There is nothing that my three-year-old daughter Pia loves more than me spinning her around (ok, maybe chocolate). She likes to go fast and she can take over 40 turns before we go down together for a crash landing.
Mi trick for spinning so long is to focus my gaze directly on her and disregard the rest of the spinning visual field. So I just had to take a picture of exactly what I see as we are spinning around: set exposure to 1/60 to 'freeze' her face but blur the background, pre-focused manually and started spinning while looking through the viewfinder....
After each spinning session, we are both so dizzy that the game is to see who can stand on their feet first. I've never won : ).
Note: This is NOT an effect: we are really spinning. Only mild color correction, sharpening and cropping done in Photoshop.
Note 2: Don't try this technique unless you are willing to crash land with a toddler on one hand and your camera on the other.
![]() |
Photo by: Rodrigo Alvarez Icaza |
Note 3: From the side it looks something like:
but with one hand on the camera.
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