Whoosh and Streaks! Panning and Slow-Speed photography!

Here is an opportunity for you to completely waste your time and money by learning skills that have no practical value at all: panning and light-streaking.

You’ve seen the ads: the sleek Mercedes sedan is racing along a street, tack sharp, and the background is a whooshy blur, giving that sense of forward motion. How do they DO that kind of picture? They photograph the Mercedes from the window of an adjoining car, travelling at EXACTLY the same speed as the Mercedes, and they use a slow shutter speed to blur the background, which – in relation to the camera – is moving!

And then you have seen the lovely nighttime cityscapes in which the car headlights and taillights make white and red streaks across the city streets They do THAT with a really slow shutter speed.

So, on this safari- which takes place on busy 14th Street NW at twilight and evening- architectural photographer and WPS Director E. David Luria will teach you how to do whooshy and streaky photography

First we will focus on the cars and buses moving along the street and follow them as they move along at 15-25 mph, shooting at JUST the right shutter speed to get the background all nice and blurry due to the swivel motion of the camera. This is NOT easy! It will take you several hundred tries until you get it right!

By now, nighttime has set in and so now we will slow down the shutter even more to have the cars and buses and moving people totally disappear, leaving only a trail of streaking lights. This technique has NO practical value other than giving you the ability to do great nighttime shots of New York or Paris or any other city at night!

You will need a sturdy tripod, a medium lens like an 18-55 lens, and a flashlight to see your camera controls at night