Picture of the Day: A Soldier on the Move

Photo by: Henry.

I looked in the Recent Uploads section of Flickr, and this picture of a soldier moving with his rifle at the ready was number two or three on the page. It’s not a technically perfect shot, but there are a some cool elements here and I really like the gist of it. Notice how the background is really blurry, while the soldier is only slightly blurred? The soldier here is moving (probably not too quickly) and the photographer is moving the camera along with him. It’s a technique called panning, where you deliberately create some motion blur in the background to emphasize the movement and action in the shot. If a flash had been used, some of the ghosting would have been eliminated and the image would look a little crisper, but it’s a cool example of panning nonetheless.

Sometimes, motion blur is a good thing.