Shooting a lot of swimming for the last fifteen years sometimes one gets a bit bored with the normal stock action shots.

An easy way to get out of it is to slow the shutter down on your camera and get some movement in your images. In photographic terms this is called panning.

In swimming one gets vertical movement and horizontal movement which can result in some amazing effects and also some creative images.

I normally shoot at around a 1/30 sec and work from here. One has to play around with the shutter speed quit a lot to got the result one desires. The speed you are shooting differs a lot from sport to sport. For instance in motor sport your starting shutter will be at around 1/125 sec. This isn’t a high persentage shot and one can get a lot of booboos from this. If you get one out of 10 then you’re doing quit well.

In important situations I normally start a race on Aperture Priority on say F8 and with the Auto ISO on. When I got a good stock action shot I flip my back command dial on my Nikon D3 one step left which will switch it to shutter priority and to the shutter speed that I have set before the race. Then shoot a few pan shot and flip the dial one step to the right to end the race on Aperture priority which is important if there are some celebrations going on.

Sitting at the Supersport Seals gala today I did shoot a few of these images to illustrate what I just said. Enjoy and keep practicing.