Category: Today’s Photo Minute

The Concept:

In Today’s Photo Minute, Brian Osborne discusses using a panning technique to work with action situations instead of just always stopping motion like we normally think about with sports or wildlife.

The Assignment:

After the lesson above, start thinking about situations where movement is involved that you might try panning on. It can take quite a bit of practice but in general, the goal is to keep the lens moving at the same speed as the subject. Linear action such as a person running or riding a bike are the easiest starting places to work on this technique. Put your camera in Shutter priority mode and start with a shutter speed of 1/125th (Usually ISO 100 or 400 will work fine for this). Then pan with the subject while letting the camera shoot multiple frames in continuous frame advance mode. If your results have a sharp subject, great. If you want a little more blur in the background (to show movement) you can try a slightly slower shutter speed (closer to 1/60th) while still making sure that you can keep tracking with the subject. Check out the examples below with the shutter speed I used listed and also take a look at our Backyard Wildlife Photo of the Day on our Instagram page where I did the panning technique on a rabbit at full speed.

The Concept:

It is time for a weekend edition of Today’s Photo Minute with “Shoot and Share”. Since this is Memorial Day weekend, we will have an extra day to do some shooting and to get your best challenge photos into share with others.

The Assignment:

Challenge 1: Telephoto – We define telephoto as any focal length on a lens greater than 50mm. This would include popular ranges like an 18-300mm or a 55-250mm zoom. For those that have larger lenses such as a 100-400mm or 150-600mm, you could certainly work with this range. While the first thing that might come to mind is photographing something that is a distance from you like a bird or animal, I want to suggest you try the telephoto range on other subjects as well. Something called compression (how close the background looks relative to the subject) takes place with the higher focal lengths and it might be cool to see how this effect plays out with different subject matters. Either way, you go, get out the telephoto lens and have fun with it.

Challenge 2: Red, White and/or Blue – Since it is Memorial Day, I figured looking for subjects that are made up of one, two or all three of these colors would be neat. Have fun coming up with what you like best for this challenge.

When you get your images ready by late on Monday, please share those with the rest of us who are participating as well. If you are on Facebook, please post them as a comment to this particular post. If you are not on Facebook, feel free to email your entries to [email protected] and I will be glad to post them

The Concept:

A shift-tilt lens (also known as a PC, perspective control lens) has a variety of functions but is mostly thought of for correcting distortion on architectural photos. In this segment, Brian Osborne is onsite at a client’s hotel property and actually demonstrates the shift function of the lens in the video.

The Assignment:

Go out with a wide-angle lens and point up at your house or a building. Notice how the more you point the lens up the more the vertical lines on the building lean in towards the top. Take a shot like this and then go into your editing software and find where you can correct vertical distortion. This is a great way to learn how much extra space you have to leave if you plan on fixing distortion in post processing. Also, take a photo with the lens pointed straight ahead at the same building and while you might get more ground in the photo than you would like, you will see how the building is much straighter. The final solution is to backup from the building and/or get the camera up higher (on a ladder) to reduce the upward angle of the lens and therefore, the distortion.

While the effect of the distortion is more easily noticed in buildings, the same thing takes place out in nature as well. The example below shows the without and with effects of a tilt-shift lens in the situation of a tall waterfall.

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