Stars and Stripes Air Show

Photographing Motion

Photography usually means recording a scene the way it looks in the viewfinder, but when the subject is moving, some pretty cool effects can be achieved. We can crank up the shutter speed and really freeze the movement, or we can slow it down and allow the action to streak across the sensor. When I photograph water, I almost always go slow; creating silky smooth areas around sharp, stationary objects, but when I photographed a high speed boat race a few months ago, I shot at very high speeds — 1/1000th of second or faster most of the time. It stopped the movement completely and showed off the super high rooster tails left behind the boats.

 

Panning

Another option for capturing motion is to take the camera and follow along with the moving subject. If the camera remains moving at the exact speed of the subject while the shutter remains open, you can get some pretty amazing results. It isn’t easy however and it’s very humbling to get bad results over and over again.

Panning_bThe first time I tried panning, I think I took over 150 photos. I knew that the bike leg of a local triathlon would be coming through the area so I found a good, out of the way spot to set up my tripod. Then, one by one and sometime two by two, racers came flying by. Time after time, I produced a nice image of a blob. I eventually figured out that I needed to speed up the shutter a little, but even then, I only walked away with 4 or 5 decent images with the sharpest one shown at right.

 

Stars and Stripes Air Show – Warren, VT

A month later I went to an airshow with my family at Sugarbush Airfield in Warren, VT. I took many photos that day, but when this one red plane continued to do low flybys in front of us, I decided to tryout my recently practiced new skill. I only had 4 or 5 opportunities to get the shot, but when I zoomed in on the image on my camera, I was excited to see the plane in detail. Without the practice a month earlier, there’s no way I would have captured this shot.

Stars and Stripes Air Show

 

Tomorrow…Setting the mood.

 

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