Last weekend, B&H & Lexar hosted a marvelous event at the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome. It was a marvelous time with some great folks and aircraft. It was a very target rich, photographic satisfying location with marvelous subjects and backgrounds lending themselves to storytelling. I posted a couple of images and they got lots of notice and comments. The “feel” of being a daredevil going fast in old flying machines comes through the photos and many have asked how I made that happen. Well, here it is.
First is the light. The three aircraft are in sun where the backgrounds not so much. Next, the aircraft are a good distance from the background, that is important. This sets up the rest of the technique. Shooting with a long lens (80-400 at 300mm) and with a camera that can rip off the frames (D5 at 12fps), you next want to rip off the frames at a slow shutter speed (1/50). This combination means that when the subject travels in front of the background and your panning is solid, the subject is frozen by the panning action while the background blurs. Understand, and this is very important, practice is everything to make this all work. This combination communicates speed. And that simply, you’re bringing speed to the still!
