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All at Ease
won
first prize in the DPS 2011 2nd Progress Print
competition for Ian Stafford and was well received on the
Folio Forum, i-witness.
“I had to laugh
a little when this picture was featured in the Durham Times
recently, the capture ended with ‘Do you have memorable
pictures of the North-East?’, Hah…..it was taken in Brugge!
Just like the
Netherlands, the Belgians love to use bicycles and Brugge is
full of them. I watched many go up and down the road in which
our hotel was situated and decided that, as I had never shot
using the ‘panning’ technique, this was an excellent
opportunity to try. I pre-visualised the image of a woman in
pastel coloured clothing going past a brick building without
any distracting features/posters/signs etc and didn’t have to
walk far from the hotel to position myself.
I stood on the
opposite side of the road and pre-focused a little way off the
kerb. With my feet parallel and facing directly towards where
I hoped to capture the shot, I turned my body to the right and
smoothly followed cyclists, continuing to pan after pressing
the shutter as in a golf swing (see,reading all those ‘how-to’
articles does come in handy sometimes!). Two cyclists fitted
the scene as intended and I managed to get what I thought were
pretty good attempts, beginners luck! Looking back, I’d have
preferred the cyclist captured in between the windows.
The shot was
taken using a Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 at 62mm, f10 @ 1/60
(generally you would use a slightly slower speed than this for
panning). Very little was done post capture, the usual levels
and sharpening, a slight desaturation and a light vignette to
pull you into the picture using Lightroom.”
Ian Stafford
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