2010 - Week 29, Panning to Show Motion

Living Room
July 18, 2010 8:17 AM & 11:22 AM
Nikon D90, 35mm
Shutter Priority, No Flash, ISO 320, SS 1/30, f/1.8 & f/2.0
RAW, Spot Metering, AF-S, WB in Auto

Panning to show motion is a great technique that is very hard (for me) to pull off.  It requires panning your camera with your subject so it stays in focus while the shutter is open which causes everything else that is not moving to blur.

Using a slow shutter speed to capture movement allows us to feel the movement more than a higher shutter speed that freezes the motion completely would, and the motion blur allows them to be isolated a little bit from the otherwise distracting background.

The technique is hard because it requires the camera to move only in the same plane that the subject is moving - so no wobbling which for me at 1/30 of a second is almost a given.

I got really lucky and the snapshot of Alena was the very first shot I took.  The one of Iva hours later (I didn't shoot for hours, but it was several hours later before she decided she wanted to play), took many more.  I kept trying to get one of her on her own, but I was not doing a good job of panning in sync with her.  And I actually like seeing Alena in the corner of this shot - it balances her a bit from being so centered.  I played with other focal points, but only had luck with the central focal point.

I don't know why I had my ISO at 320, it wasn't to push the f-stop down.  It may have helped if I had lowered it to 200 and gotten a slightly more closed aperture.  I picked 1/30 because I knew that it was slow enough to show motion, but not so long that I would be getting vertical blur because I was shaking the camera all over the place.





post-processing
Since these pictures were taken about 3 hours apart the lighting was different in the room. To the photo that was taken later in the day I added a selective color layer and masked the walls, adjusting the yellow to make the wall color appear more similar.