Learn how to add a sense of motion in your sports photography by learning tips on slow shutter panning techniques.
I went out to photograph a Bike Race during the 2008 Italian Week in Ottawa (ItalianWeekOttawa.com) last weekend. The race, and my photography was unfortunately cut short because of a thunder storm with heavy rain. I did manage to get a few shots before the downpour.

In order to give a sense of motion in the photographs, I used panning at slow shutter speed. To be effective, these types of photographs usually need to have some parts of the image in focus, but you can also get interesting abstracts where nothing is in focus.

1 – Panning
Panning consists of following your subject during the exposure.
Start by following the moving subject in your viewfinder, press the shutter and keep following you subject with the camera until the exposure is complete. With an SLR, after pressing the shutter the viewfinder is blacked out during exposure so it may be difficult to follow through.
You can practice the panning technique by bringing up the camera but looking above it as you follow your subject, press the shutter and follow through.
Fortunately with digital cameras you can practice this technique and and make adjustments based on the results you see on your display.
There is a lot of hit and miss with panning so if you get a few good photos for every 20 shots you take, you’re doing ok.

2 - Slow Shutter speed
In order for the panning technique to be effective you will need to use a slow shutter speed on your camera. A good starting point is a shutter speed of 1/30th of a second. The slower the shutter, the longer the streaks from the background will be but the harder it will be to have your moving subject in focus. Depending on the subject speed, your distance from the subject and the focal length of your lens you may have to adjust your shutter speed.

Tip 1: Make sure that you set your camera to Shutter priority (Tv) so that you select and control the shutter speed.

Tip 2: When panning avoid having white or bright objects in the background or foreground. Bright foreground objects can cause bright streaks into which your subject will disappear. For best results avoid objects in the foreground relative to your subject and try to position yourself so that you have a dark background throughout your panning landscape.

Tip 3: If your subject is within your flash range, you can underexpose your image and let your flash properly expose your moving subject. This should give you a sharp subject against a darker background.

Tip 4: When using flash you will have a ghost image of your subject when panning. To get more realistic results always set your flash for 2nd curtain sync. This will place the ghost image behind your subject rather than in front of it. (Ghost image in front of the subject looks odd)

Tip 5: If you want your panned subject to be in focus, make sure that you are panning parallel to your subject’s trajectory.

Tip 6: If your camera’s autofocus cannot focus on the moving subject fast enough, set it in manual mode and pre-focus to a point where you expect your subject to be at the start of the panning.

Here are some sample photographs taken during the event.

Slow shutter panning photo of cyclist during race.

In the first photograph above, I was standing at a corner and I was panning while racers were taking that corner. You won’t get any part of the subject in focus in this case because the subject is not moving parallel to camera. Using a flash with 2nd curtain sync would have helped in this case.

Blurred background panned photo of group of cyclists during race

In the second photo above, the foreground cyclist is in focus as he is parallel to the camera plane and I panned him at the right speed. The other cyclists however are blurred because they were not going the same speed as the foreground cyclist.

Panned photo of cycling race at street corner

In this third photograph above, only the rider in the middle of the pack was captured in focus as the group was completing a corner.

Panned photo of cycling race at street corner with no sharp subject

In this last photo above, no part of the image is close to being in focus, but it certainly has a sense of motion to it.

Note that ‘in focus’ when it comes to panned photography is a relative term. The achieved focus is not what you would get in a frozen action shot.

So take out your camera and give panning a shot!