My Photography: TAOP - Intro - Exercise 5 - Panning at Different Shutter Speeds

This blog post is in relation to the exercise on Page 21 of the OCA Photography 1- TAOP course material.

For this exercise I chose to photograph traffic at a busy round-about, it's the one on the A59 just north of Skipton if you were wondering. The reason I chose this was because the cars would be moving at a fairly constant speed, and the arrows in the background would be a clear indication of movement, as well as being a 'yard stick' when comparing various shutter speeds.
I took a couple of shots at fast shutter speeds as an example of how a moving objects can look stationary if the whole image looks sharp, and have included the learner driver (which looks stationary or very slow) as I think it is quite amusing when compared to something like the Audi TT (which looks fast and sporty).
It took me a few attempts to get the hang of panning at the same speed as the moving cars, and found that it helped to concentrate on keeping the cross in my camera's view finder on just one part of the car, instead of trying look at the picture as a whole.
I'm quite pleased with outcome of this set. There is a sense of movement in all of the photos, and when you compare the blurring of the arrows in the background there is a good indication of speed.
My favourite shot is is the 1/10sec shot of the blue Megan. It's not technically the best photograph (it's slightly over exposed and the horizon is miles out) but it's very dynamic and the the reflection on the road gives the photo a nice shape.
If the thumbnail links are missing, view the full image on the Flickr set for this exercise