Panning is a fun photo technique that can create surreal, beautiful and fascinating images. It is a form of Intentional Camera Movement, or ICM, and with a bit of practice, you actually get a few “keepers”
A simple technique – all you need to do is “swipe” your camera up or down your subject, while leaving the shutter open. You are “panning” the trees, or cars, or whatever you like. Typically a shutter speed of about 1/15th of a second works well, but it helps to experiment with faster or slower shutter speeds. And it can take a lot of practice to get a steady, smooth movement, but even with some shake, you can create some fun stuff.
We have experimented with panning both stationary subjects such as trees, and moving subjects such as cyclists or cars. Here are a few tips and some of our examples of both.
Panning Stationary Objects
Using a slower shutter speed, maybe 1/30th or 1/15th second, swipe your camera up or down – you are panning your subject. Sometimes called “Swipes”, you can also pan horizontally or diagonally. Part of the fun of panning is that you never really know how the image will turn out. Trees work quite well, as although you can get a dreamy, surreal image, you still recognize the subject. But it is fun to experiment with other subjects, such as flowers, a ship at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, or rust patterns at Steel Stacks.
Panning Moving Objects
Moving on to a different kind of panning – now, both the subject and the camera are moving. We follow our subject with the camera. This allows us to get the subject relatively sharp, and blur the background. You try to match the subject’s rate of movement and the direction is which is travelling. Cars are great subjects, as it is relatively easy to keep your camera focused on them if they are a distance away. The examples below of the cyclists were much more challenging, as they were very close to us, and the panning had to happen much faster.
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