Movement at Houhai

BeijinGX had another outing in January and this time our creative leader came up with the idea to prepare techniques and/or themes. We met at Houhai where lots of people would gather on a Saturday to go ice skating, ice biking, pick sledding or just stroll around and enjoy the atmosphere. Once we gathered at Starbucks for something hot our leader Nicholas distributed little pieces of paper with a theme on it. Love, laughter, freezing cold, panning, movement to mention just a few. My theme of the day was movement. My goal: capture moving objects and or people. To be very honest I ended up doing more panning than anything else.

To get around easier and not fall on my butt I rented an ice bike. This way I could also cover more of the lake and get some different shots. But before I did that I went to the ice skating part and took some shots of the skaters. It is not easy taking panning shots of them, but because of the speed when it does work properly you end up with some awesome pictures. The key is to follow one particular skater for a few rounds and get the movement just right. Follow him/her through your view finder making the same movement the skater is. Than set your Shutterspeed mode (TV) to a slow speed (I used 1/10 to 1/20). While folloing the skater take the picture and keep your camera moving until the picture has been taken. What happens is that your subject (the skater) is in focus while everything else is blurred. Just take a look at the pictures below.

After taking all these panning shots I focused on some other objects around that would show movement. I ended of focussing my camera on this cotton candy.