Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Tips for Better Photographs - Part 6


Panning

This is a technique I recently learned after reading THIS e-book. What you want to do is capture motion, but not by having the subject blurry, but the background blurry.

The above shot was my first attempt at practicing this. If you'd like to try, just ask someone to run or ride a bike, horse, carriage, whatever, in a semi-circle around you. Point your camera at them when they start going, focus, carefully follow them as they go, then shoot.

It was really fun to try this. Here are some other attempts that weren't as good, but still, like I said...fun!

Photobucket

In the above photo, it appears that the 8-year-old girl was running a little too fast for me to keep up, but apparently, the dog wasn't. His face is in perfect focus!

Photobucket

I liked this one, too, but I didn't follow the rule of not having a lot going on the background. There's the baby running the the opposite direction, the dog, the truck, the plants. On the other hand, this completely captures the chaos my life is right now, so perhaps it's the perfect picture.

So anyway, something fun you might want to try some time! And now for some eye candy. I was send this photo in an email on Sunday and it perfectly depicts what I'm trying to learn. Check it out...

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If you'd like to see more amazing photos where that came from go HERE. Thanks for listening.

2 comments:

BarbaraJo said...

I've been meaning to stop by to see you but I have been super busy getting ready for my dad to come to town. Next week...

Expat Mom said...

I really love that last photo! Here's are two of mine from when my kids were playing futbol the other day:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4062/4678543728_42309374b1.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4029/4677920941_080b5db96e.jpg