Proof that panning shots are art not science

Following my post yesterday on 10 tops tips for panning I thought I had better go and swallow some of my own medicine and practice some panning.

I had a free couple of hours this morning, so I went out into the chaos that is mid-morning Cairo, and stood on a street corner for a couple of hours – always an interesting experience! Other than getting a couple of locals insisting that I moved location once or twice, the morning went reasonably well.

The fruits of my labour are below. Not perfect by a long measure, but an improvement on before and certainly I feel that I am getting more comfortable with the positioning of the subject in the panning frame, selecting the right shutter speed and finally, today, some progress on the focusing. In the six images below you can see how I start out very shaky – literally – with off centre framing. As the morning progresses I get in closer and manage to get the subject more central and the focus more accurate. By the end of the morning – the 6th shot below of the red vespa – I had bought together the combination of background, subject, shutter speed and framing and was even getting a little cocky and tilting the camera to try and vary the composition.

It was great fun and time well spent, although surprisingly tiring and it made me realize that this is a technique that I have only just scratched the surface of! Lots more practice required!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 7:34 pm. It is filed under Travel, Workshops and tagged with Cairo, Panning, Techniques, Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.