action photography » One Fine Picture

Panning for Patriots

Sep 272010

The crowd fell silent as the four jet fighters moving as one, screamed through the air. They continued to accelerate, approaching the speed of sound while making hairpin twists and turns in a carefully choreographed maneuver above Lake Erie.

Suddenly all the jets bolted dead upright defying gravity in a heart stopping straight vertical climb that lasted several seconds before turning and swooping down toward the earth.

The Blue Angels

Click to Enlarge

It was official — the Blue Angels were in town.

Photographing anything airborne always presents challenges. How could I capture this through the camera’s small rectangular viewfinder?

There’s the technical challenge of getting a crisp image of a moving subject. This is done with a technique called ‘panning’ or slowly moving th camera from side to side.

Panning is as much a skill as an art.

The skill involves holding the camera close to your body, elbows tucked in to your sides, and smoothly tracking the object while pressing the shutter. The art is predicting where the object travels next — easier done with bicyclists circling a track than jet fighters showing off their latest evasive military exercises.

Panning is really impressive when the subject stays sharp and a soft blur falls over a busy background such as trees or buildings. However, this doesn’t really apply when you have a blue sky and just a few scattered clouds.

The other important piece is to add perspective. Capturing a nearby cloud will let your audience know that these jets are legit — not toy planes launched for a high school science fair. I was lucky and caught this flag in the foreground.

Faster than the Speed of Sound

Click to Enlarge

More soon.

The Tall Ships Are Coming

action photography, camera settings, day photography, my favorites No Responses »

Aug 312010

Saw the tall ships recently. These mighty titans once were scattered across all the seas a couple of centuries ago, but today they’re mostly seen on the big screen — enter Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, travelling on the HMS Bounty.

The first day the ships were tucked in port at Lake Erie, which meant that their massive sails were down. With just the masts and ropes showing, they looked more like tall wooden toothpicks.

Tall Ships

As always, the question was what to shoot? I looked around and all I saw was rope. Rope to tie the sails, rope to stabilize the masts, and even more rope to tie other ropes. This didn’t seem all that interesting but as I tried to make the most of it and along the way snapped this sideboat.

SideBoat	Rope All Around

However, later that night I learned that Capt. Wayne Bratton of the Holiday was planning a last chance to cruise near the tall ships at full bloom, and get close and personal before they left the port.

Called the good Captain the next day, reserved a spot, paid, and in no time, I was literally coasting just a few feet away from these beauties. Close enough for a ship portrait if there is such a thing.

Luckily, the morning threatened to rain so there was some great cloud cover to make these vessels really stand out. Plus, brought my polarizer (the one lens that Photoshop can’t mimic) to get the most blue out of the sky.