Action!
A short while ago I was working on a photo album for my employer. And for that I needed some photographic material. As I work for a trucking company we had lots and lots of photos of….trucks. Surprisingly enough…
I wanted a bit more and a bit different though and for that I had to challenge my amateur photography skills. What was left of that session is the photo you see above — it’s (nothing more or less) an anonymous vehicle photographed with a technique called ‘panning’…
Panning is nice! It basically comes down to sliding your camera along with your subject. In this case you see the white truck speeding from right to left. I focused on the mirror attached to the door, and followed it whilst taking the photo. You will need quite a long shutter speed. The white ralley truck was shot with 1/30 sec at f18 with ISO100.
The beauty of it all is that you can use this technique even at lower speeds of your subject. As you can see I was lucky enough with ralley trucks and helicopters, but….Imagine someone walking down a path. If you ‘drag’ your camera along with your subject whíle taking the picture, it will give the effect of speed, or additional speed.
My panning photos never made it to the original album, which was a 20th anniversary gift (I’ll post some of that album later). The party we had was my lucky day however, because of all the photo opportunities you see above. How often do you see choppers and monster trucks, let alone drive and fly with them as a passenger!
