Photographs of motion are quite widespread here on Zonerama. That’s why we’ve decided to take a closer look at one such photo—and with it, at the technique called panning.

Panning is a very popular technique that photographers use to photograph motion. The core of this trick is to leave the shutter open a little bit longer than you usually would when photographing motion. Then you track the moving object with your camera and take the picture. That gives you an effect like the one in this photo here.

Too Colorful

However, this photo feels a little oversaturated to us. We’d recommend drawing down the colors a bit to make them feel more natural. Just a few numbers downward would be enough. As for the overall color composition, we view that very positively. The picture includes two strongly constrasting colors—red and green—that are great complements to each other. Thanks to the use of colors from opposing sides of the color spectrum, your eyes won’t lose their way in this photo.

The photo looks much better with some desaturation.

Attention, Train

The photo also has excellent composition: the train is zooming “into the photo.” But we do have to point out the distracting tree back behind the train. Next time around, it would be better to stand in a compositionally “cleaner” spot, because here it looks as if a tree were growing out of the train. But we also understand how hard it can be to find a good picture-taking spot close to a train track.

Motion photography is not the easiest of genres, but this photographer seems to have some experience with capturing motion, and it shows. Want to try something like this too? Then do!