P#12: Photograph of the Joys of Snowshoeing

Capturing the Motion

Charlie Borland: When I took this shot, I was out with a group of friends that I frequently use as models for various shoots. We were doing all kinds of stuff and I had them snowshoeing down the trail towards me.

I have a 200mm lens on so I'm sort of sacking them up, shooting vertical and horizontal, and getting some great shots of them just smiling as they're snowshoeing towards me. Then I put on the wide angle lens to create this photograph. (click the image for a larger version)

Here, the idea was to have them running in the snow because the snowshoes will flip snow all through the air and create this powdery mist around them. To take the shot I was locking my elbows into my ribs and panning with them as they were running.

I purposefully went for just ever so slight a blur to them. Notice where the feet have a little bit of blur to them and the hand movements have a little bit of blur? This is usually achieved around a 30th to 60th of a second, and I want to keep the face good and sharp.

I had them all just run by me probably two or three times. I was shooting vertically and kept that autofocus point on their shoulder.

That's the best way to take a shot like this. Just keep going and to get a little bit of blur to show some of the movement.

In Closing

Charlie Borland's photographs are the perfect example of how motion can be captured in a single shot. To get the movement of this woman snowshoeing, he had the models running back and for multiple times as he panned the camera with them - and it's a technique that seems to work very well.