The purpose of this assignment is to consolidate understanding of Shutter Speed and how it affects motion (freezing or blurring).
Set 1
Blurring and Freezing Movement
Set 2
Panning
I found the first photo to be my favorite because the blur in the background was the most obvious but the car is still in relatively good focus, and you can see the movement in the wheels a bit. I would have liked to get the whole bus in the second photo but I think I needed to have stepped back a bit more to have the whole bus in the frame at the same time.
Reflection
What did you find challenging about this shoot?
After I was done shooting and came to look at my photos, I realized that shooting with a 50mm 1.4 lens, I should have started with the lowest ISO when I was doing the blurring and freezing session. Because I started at 250 my first photo was incredibly overexposed. I didn’t factor in how bright the day was.
Another challenge I had was figuring out how to track while doing the panning exercise. I was either trying to focus instead of pan, or taking a photo instead of focusing. It took me a bit to figure out when the right time was to click the shutter. And because my camera was set on single shot, I could not get more than two photos of the subject in one pan.
What did you find rewarding?
One of the things I found rewarding was that the panning technique works nicely! I was surprised when I pulled my photos into light room to see that I had managed to freeze a few of the cars nicely and still like the framing and movement in the photo. I originally wanted to photograph a friend riding his bike but couldn’t organize a good time window so the road next to my apartment was the next best thing.
I also found the backdrop that I used for the photos somewhat rewarding because it added a sense of story to the photos for me, with the touch of red of the fire truck in the third photo.
I definitely feel like I need more practice with panning and I’m excited to try it out on other subjects like bike riders.