Yesterday I was at the Hestehoven (coltsfoot) show jumping event nearby. Having taken thousands of show jumping photos over the year, I felt it was time to learn something new.
Although I have always been satisfied with these kind of photos, and especially their clarity, I wanted to start taking other photos that conveyed the speed and intensity og show jumping. I had wanted to try panning for a while, and finally got the opportunity.
Panning, if done wrong, just gives a blurry picture. And I had a lot of those…
But if done right, some parts of the photo is clear (typically the main subject) and the rest is blurry. With cars or boats, getting the movement right is not that challenging… The challenge comes with getting the head of the rider or horse sharp while they are moving erratically across the field…
After a lot of practice, I started to get the hang of it:
Of course, I had to train on panning over an obstacle as well. That proved even more difficult:
After some practice, I started to get the hang of it.
It was a fun day at the event, but I notice that my “hit ratio” (the rate of acceptable photos against total photos) dropped from 1 in 5 to 1 in 100. So I guess I need to train more…
The rest of the photos from Hestehoven are found on my Flickr page
Nice. I have some of the same photos 😉