Exploring the Art of the Panning Shot in Street Photography - Part 1

All of us have seen those photos that have a moving subject in focus, while the background has a delicious motion blur. Such photos, called panning shots, evoke a feeling of action and movement - making it popular in sports photography (a football player dribbling along the pitch), motorsports (a rally car jumping over a mound or an F1 car speeding along a straight) and even wildlife photography (a cheetah speeding through the grassland towards its prey).

Do panning shots have a place in street photography?

Street photography is all about capturing the life, pulse and action happening in the patch of the world where we happen to be at the moment, camera in tow. There is no dearth of action out there -- kids running, buses and cars moving along brightly lit roads, cyclists speeding along and so much more. These moments make beautiful panning shots - transforming the normal and mundane into sublime snapshots of everyday life.

Basics of panning photography

What makes a panning shot?

When you look at the photo above, two things are immediately evident:

1. The bicyclist is in focus

2. The background has a directional blur along the line of movement

These two things together give a sense of movement - a moment of action frozen in time. This is the essence of a panning shot.

None of the above aspects are added in post-production - the focus and the blur are both captured in-camera. Getting this right is the most important part of a panning photo.

Taking a panning photograph

Now that we know what makes a panning shot, let's now see how to take one. Let's first look at setting things up for a panning shot, to simplify things.

Setting Up

I will first list down the camera settings that you need to do before you start taking the panning shot. Don't worry if these things do not immediately make sense - I will explain each as we go along. (For the sake of this article, I am assuming you are using a camera that has Manual controls with an auto-focus lens).

1. Shutter Speed -- Set it to 1/30s or 1/60s.

2. Aperture or fstop - I like to keep it between f/5.6 and f/11

3. Focus Mode - Continuous Focus (Usually called AI Servo AF or AF-C, depending on your camera make)

4. Focus Type - Tracking Focus

5. Shooting Mode / Drive - Burst / Continuous mode.

Once we have these settings down, we are ready to take a panning shot. How do we do that? We'll go through the process in Part 2 of the series.

Meanwhile, try to take some photos with the above settings. Move your camera around when pressing the shutter - see what you get! Sometimes fun results come out of experimentation!

On to Part 2!