Photographing movement: Panning at different shutter speeds

For this exercise, I took my camera off the tripod and photographed my subject in light clothing walking in front of a dark background of evergreen bushes and a wood fence. I panned the camera with his movement and took a series of photos, from 1/1000 of a second to 1/4 of a second. It was a bright sunny day, and I was using 100 speed film with a yellow filter.



1/1000. The subject is walking slowly, so the fast shutter speed froze the entire image, even though I was moving the camera.




1/500th. Still freezes everything even though I was moving the camera.


1/250th. Everything is still sharp. I'm a little surprised. I would've thought I'd start seeing movement in the background here, but I guess the subject was walking slowly enough that I wasn't panning very quickly.




1/125th. Still sharp...


1/60th. Here's where I can start to tell something is up, although I can't quite tell what's happening. The subject looks a little "out of sync" with the background, but I can't really tell why.



1/30. Still looks a little out of step with the background.



1/15th. I love this photo! The subject looks like he's moving really, really slowly. Kind of like he was going fast, but put the breaks on right away. Neat!



1/8th. I think at this speed, the shutter was open too long to get a stable image of the subject, but I still like how he stands out from the background.


1/4. This is strange because he looks like he's walking briskly, but not fast enough to have the background so blurry, so it makes him pop out even more. He's kind of in synch with his environment, but not really. I like how the background darkened, so the shirt really stands out. And his arms look folded, which makes him look like he's cold. There is a kind of tension in this photo that I can't really describe just yet. Maybe I'll come back to it.

I will definitely experiment more with panning. I like how it separates the subject from the context. I would like to do this kind of exercise again with a subject that's moving more quickly.