Dragging Cyclists in Camera
This is kind of a photo recipe. We had a cycle race today in town. The streets were closed for several races through town. There were a lot of cameras out and most of them where phone cameras. Don’t get me wrong, you can get some pretty amazing photos with a phone, but one thing you can’t do at the moment is to go into shutter priority mode and drag your shutter. Most all of my photos were a taken with the ISO set to 100, and the shutter set to 1/20th. Since it was shutter priority, the aperture would fluctuate between f/4.5 and f/8. As the sun continued to go down I’d boost the ISO to ensure the aperture wouldn’t stay at f/3.5.
In order to get this type of image you have to pan with your subject while in continuous shooting mode.. This is really easy to do, but expect to have a lot of bad blurry photos. For me only about 5% were in focus but out of the total with only about 2% were any good. Here are a few select images that I thought came out better than the rest. Which one is your favorite?
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I am a top photographer in the Mocksville, North Carolina Professional Photographers guide on MarketingTool.com.
I love to pan with cyclists. My ONLY good panning shots are of cyclists in fact. Maybe it’s a matter of speed. Maybe it’s not enough practice, but I wish my success rate would be as good as yours. (That’s why your the pro and I’m just a hack.)
As far as favorites, I would have to say it would depend on my purpose. Either of the two shots at the far left are great. The upper shot gives even more motion because you have not only the typical lateral motion but also the curvlinear motion rounding the corner.
#5, however, is spectacular. The cyclist is tack sharp (well, at this size she is anyway) for her entire body except for the lower part of her legs. This captures her persona, not just the motion blur. The only thing I don’t like about it is because of the panning, she has little room to “ride into,” even if the image is cropped differently. This is just another complexity to add to the difficulties of panning.
Don’t get me wrong though. Assuming anyone reads this comment, I love to experiment with panning despite its difficulties. Sometimes you can get stunning shots. Sometimes, you’ll get garbage. Either way, it’s worth trying.
By the way, I sometimes wonder when I’m panning with autos if people think I’m with the Department of Homeland Security. I worry that sometime someone who may be a bit outside the law might want to visit me with more than artistry on his or her mind!
By the way, I’ve also used the dragged shutter technique when photographing dancers at wedding receptions. It not only helps to capture the sometimes frentic nature of the dance but also, give DJ lighting these days, can give a surreal quality to the photo.
My favorite it the second one.
None of the photos are cropped. I did everything in RAW because it was an evening race and I knew the light was going to change quickly as the sun set. So all I did was cull, color correct and post. Out of this batch I do like the sharpness of this photo the most and it may go into the portfolio. If it does, I’ll spend a little extra time with it and crop to give the cyclist more room to go.