Photography Technique: Pan Blur

Read the description and give it a try, but I'd recommend doing it with lenses that do not have Image Stabilization (IS/VR) systems that might get damaged if the up and down movements are too abrupt.

Originally shared by +Jeff Sullivan

Colorful Aspen in Motion
The Fall colors were spectacular over the weekend in the Eastern Sierra, and the changing lighting during the day provided almost endless opportunities for dramatic and creative captures. I say "almost' only because at this time of year, the days are too short! About the best you can do is start well before dawn and continue until well after dark. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the Orionid meteor shower provided bonus opportunities all night long, so the weekend ended up being quite the photography marathon.

This was produced with the pan blur technique I've been playing with: finding subjects with an interesting blend of color, contrast and light, and capturing them hand held, panning the camera up and down. It's a great way to exercise how you see a scene.
"I almost never set out to photograph a landscape, nor do I think of my camera as a means of recording a mountain or an animal unless I absolutely need a 'record shot'. My first thought is always of light." – Galen Rowell

It was a busy weekend, with hordes of photographers crowding the most popular spots, and starting to discover and clog up many of the formerly obscure ones, thanks to the Internet. Fortunately there are still a few places which haven't been named/promoted and mapped to death, so +Lori Hibbett and I were able to have most of our shooting locations to ourselves.

We heard that +Kurt Harvey and his wife were coming to the area, so we met Kurt Friday and Saturday nights to do a little light painting and star trail photography. We ran into +Michael Frye and +Claudia Welsh at dinner Saturday, for the second weekend in a row. I thought I recognized a couple of folks with them… turned out one of them was +Doug Kaye. Also in the area were +Maximilian Laue +Brian Bach Sørensen +Swee Oh +elizabeth hahn +Tim Gupta +Larry Nienkark and +Scott Loftesness, so check out their streams this week for Fall colors as well (we had heard many of them were going to Yosemite National Park, so sadly we didn't connect with them).

It's interesting that you actually need to pay as much or more attention to technical details when trying to pull off shots like this, if you want them to turn out particularly well. Here are a couple of blog posts I've written on shooting Fall colors in recent years:

Shooting & Postprocessing Fall Colors Images
http://activesole.blogspot.com/2010/10/shooting-postprocessing-fall-colors.html

Shoot Fall Colors Like a Pro
http://activesole.blogspot.com/2007/09/shoot-fall-colors-like-pro.html