Alex Megremis Photography

This is from a long time ago, when I was walking around in the Melbourne CBD. There are few places that I haven’t visited, or photographed, by now, if I’m honest. However, there’s always the opportunity for new perspective.

This shot was one of several I took of passing trains. I was at the far end of the tracks, near Flinders Street Station (Wikipedia), where there is a gate that is always open. The gate just so happens to lead on to the tracks. I have been there before, in daytime, and I have made a couple of other good photographs of various fixtures in the area around/between the tracks. This time, however, I was there at nighttime, and I wanted to see what I could make of it.

When the first couple of trains had gone by, I had decided: panning photos.

The speed

Panning is a very fun way to achieve some very interesting imagery. Your goal is to convey the sense of energy, or, more specifically, you are capturing implied motion.

The technique is simple to describe, yet requires great amounts of practice to truly master. In a nutshell…

• You are tracking a moving object with your lens. You pick a specific point and you lock it visually in your frame, rotating your camera to maintain its relative position as it moves.
• You are slowing down you shutter speed to something that will give you motion blur in your background. In most cases you would be aiming at something like 1/25 to 1/40. This depends on your subject, of course, as well as your focal length. The longer the focal length, the less likely it is you will be able to achieve a stable subject, but the more the background blur is accentuated, so you can raise your shutter speed.
• You are paying very close attention to your shooting technique because you don’t want your subject to show signs of camera shake. That also takes a great deal of practice, and stabilization facilities offered by various camera systems offer some, but little, assistance.

Note that, if you are panning, unless your subject is moving in a perfect circle around you, it is technically impossible to achieve critical focus. There will always be some blur, as perspective distortion changes your subject’s footprint. However, in most cases (again, subject dependent), if the technique is executed well, the loss of detail is marginal, hopefully it is not perceptible, maybe even undetectable.

I’ll save you

Like a speeding bullet

Don’t forget