I took this photo before it happened. Timed and rehearsed to execute a vision from the previous day, the shot made the most of unfavourable midday sun to play with its blinding contrasts.
I was fortunate to receive one of this year’s Automobile Journalists Association of Canada Photography awards for the result. Presented by Mazda Canada at AJAC’s 2024 Journalism Awards, the annual photo awards highlight a published image along with a secondary ‘Unpublished’ category that welcomes the shots we take for our own satisfaction, if not for specific use in a story.
My winning (!) submission to this category was the above frame of the Le Mans-raced ‘R7’ 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RSR at Laguna Seca taken during a parade lap during Porsche’s Rennsport Reunion 7. It shows the car in motion, framed ahead by the foreground silhouette of a catch fence and behind by the midday shadow of a footbridge.
Far from a lucky coincidence or pick from a burst-fired shutter dump, it was a planned and practiced composition. R7 was to head to track for a parade lap with a handful of legacy racers too precious to race in the main sessions scheduled throughout each day. Having eyed that particular shadow while shooting trackside the previous day, I noted to return partway through the next day’s pre-parade session to find a position and rhythm before the icons rolled out.
In announcing the award, the judges kindly emphasized both the image’s composition and dynamism — the specific traits I selected and submitted it for. Discussion of the former might be a tad tweed-and-leather for Driving, but the latter should be of interest to those exploring dynamic automotive photography.
Theory: Panning
Panning is the art of sweeping a camera across a scene to blur a background and express motion. Done right, a pan can make a 20 km/h subject look as though it’s rolling at 200; conversely, the wrong technique might leave a fast subject looking slow, even static.
Panning is a pile trickier than static stills shooting. Whereas lots of casual photography will use the shortest shutter speed possible to minimize the amount of shake or movement reflected in the final exposure, pans drag the exposure time out so that the photographer can cover more ground — and thus blur more scenery into their final image. A shutter speed of 1/40, for instance, opens the shutter for 100 times more time (and thus potential movement) than a setting of 1/4000. The shot at 1/4000 will be sharp and steady, with wheels that look like they’re standing still and no sense of the subject transiting its environment; a shot at 1/40, meanwhile, can look like the car is blasting across, wheels blurred invisible to reveal the brakes behind. This is because a shot at 1/40 will have time to accompany the car across 100 times more ground, the wheels around 100 times as many degrees’ rotation. Unfortunately, blurring a background across a long exposure is easy; focusing and holding the subject clearly is not.
The primary challenge is the need to keep the subject in exactly the same time position on the camera’s sensor (or film plane) as you do this. Wobble up or down, outpace or fall behind, twist a little, and you’ll see ghostly details radiating out from whichever relative (compositional) position the subject occupied for most of the exposure. The answer to this is to pick key reference points: ideally the near headlight on approach, front wheel while passing, rear wheel as it pulls away, and then near rear taillight on departure. Viewfinder grid lines (usually thirds) are helpful for this, as they provide square crosshairs to place over those ‘anchor’ details.
The next challenge is perspective and axis of travel. A car moving perpendicular to the shooter (ie. straight across a horizon) is easiest and most reliable, as this simply bares a square-on side with little perceptible change in distance or perspective.
Shooting corners is more challenging because the car’s shape and size will unavoidably change relative to the shooter and their sensor. Shot from the outside of a turn, the car will appear to grow, rotate, then shrink — every detail twisting axes, parts of parts changing shape. This is less severe when shooting squarely from the inside of a corner, as the car hypothetically sweeps a steady axis around the shooter, holding a more consistent distance from the shooter than it will across the same stretch tracked from the other side.
Further complicating this are the realities of weight transfer and vehicle dynamics. Even if you lock a reference point in exactly the right spot, any car braking, cornering, and accelerating hard will be pitching and rolling on its suspension, vibrating as it revs, and so on. This is best visualized with the example of wheels: a perfectly tracked wheel shot will show sharp brake detail, but the inherent motion of the wheel and its spokes blurs around their centre.
All of this returns to the importance of those reference points. Given that the whole car is inherently going to change shape and blur and shake in warbly ways, a photographer must pick a specific detail that will anchor the shot. This should be chosen ahead of time, as switching between references mid-pass at race speeds is generally unrealistic. If a corner-exit tail shot is the goal, this means ‘looking through’ the car to pick up the target, settling into a smooth panning motion so that the crosshair naturally falls onto the anchor taillight as it appears.
Chosen correctly, this one spot of clarity amid blurry distortion even of the subject itself will focus the viewer’s eye and make the scene pop; chosen (or simply picked up) incorrectly, even a clear-captured anchor will look wrong. A sharp front wheel but blurry rear as a car drives away, for instance, is a quick discard.
Panning Technique
This section assumes a working knowledge of manual camera controls and modifiers.
Distance
The nearer you are to a passing object, the faster it will appear. Thus, the closer the shooter is to a subject, the more they will have to move to follow it. The more the camera has to move, the more likely the shooter is to shake and blur their shot.
Up-close trackside shooting rapidly twists the entire torso. This can convey plenty of motion below the horizon, but increases the risk of blurring a shot in addition to the challenge of perspective.
Get farther back, and a zoomed 200-mm shot needs to swing just a few degrees to capture the same travel. This affords some leeway to press down into shutter speeds that simply aren’t realistic up close, but can conversely require more movement to match close-up motion blur.
Regardless of position, distance between subject and background shape each shot’s outcome: just as a faraway car appears slower, so too does a faraway background. The closer and more vertically detailed the background to the subject, the faster the subject will appear to be passing it.
Posture
Just as a target shooter exhales to pull the trigger, a photographer should similarly relax their body as they start snapping. The body should unwind as you shoot. Orient the feet a little down the road from where your ideal shot will be, then wind back in preparation for the subject’s arrival. Pick up the target, start matching pace as you settle onto your reference point, then unwind the body as you start releasing the shutter.
Standing toward an approaching subject means winding and stressing the body as it nears — and a shakier frame as a result.
Shutter speed
Shutter speed is at the core of a lively pan, and it’s all about how low you can go — or what compromise you’re willing to accept.
Starting off ‘fast’ at 1/160th of a second is usually a safe entry point. While far from zoomy, 1/160 is slow enough to capture some wheel spin and hopefully some background motion. Knowing the theory above, even an unsteady 1/160 should be legible enough for you to see both the ‘base’ image you were presumably chasing, and to clearly understand which way you’ve blurred the subject. Tighten that up with practice — passing cars at a highway ramp will do — and then start notching the shutter slower.
I’ve been shooting spots of motorsport for nearly a decade, brushing up wherever I can to keep the panning steady and ready. I can’t hold a frame to IMSA-touring pros like local (retrained model!) Jordan Lenssen [Instagram], but I know my rules, theory, hand, and kit well enough to hit the ground after months’ hiatus at 1/60 and reliably drop to 1/30.
Speeds of 1/15 or 1/8 are more reliable from long distances due to the range of motion involved.
Remember that speeds in the thousandths have their place in freezing shallow-focus, high-speed approaches and departures from head on, but that they will freeze side detail such as wheels.
Aperture and focus
Panning typically biases toward tighter apertures (f/8+) than static shots for three primary reasons:
• Greater depth of field leaves focus leeway;
• Preventing overexposure during such long daytime exposures;
• Motion should blur the background anyway.
Fast-moving subjects may move toward or away from you faster than even modern autofocus can keep pace with. A tighter aperture means a deeper range will stay in focus, and with that a capacity for clarity even if the car escapes the precise point of focus.
Background details in the zone of focus may be sharp rather than traditionally milky, but this can also serve a certain flavour of motion blur on a busy background.
Alternatively, fitting a darkening neutral density filter can free a shooter to open back up to a wider aperture like f/4 or lower — as long as they’re confident they can place and maintain focus accurately enough.
Stopped-down zone focusing should not be overlooked, hot as your AI-autofocused Sony may have you feeling. I shot most of my trackside images at Le Mans with a 60-year-old manual-focus film lens by pre-focusing to where I wanted to drop the shutter, dialling aperture to suit the width of the track, and waiting to shoot until each subject reached that spot.
Composition
Without diving into the elbow patches, it’s worth noting that the rule of thirds applies to cars as anywhere, and that thirds viewfinder guidelines can make helpful crosshairs as mentioned above.
It’s generally wise to zoom back a bit and leave some breathing room. This is a rare dimension where gear can make a difference: more megapixels mean more room to crop down from a conservative margin.
Shutter discipline
There’s no one way to shoot, but you should have a reason for shooting in the way that you do.
As with a rifle, I find it preferable to wait and squeeze single shots at the right moment. Machine-gunning is always an option, of course, but I don’t have the time to cull through thousands of near-identical frames like I did in my early years.
Bursts are ‘safe’ and have their place of course, such as in high-speed head-ons or in capturing unexpected, unplannable action. Bursts mean a fractional reset time between frames, but more importantly, they surrender control over the start point of the frame you really want.
The winning shot
This final point on shutter discipline returns us to the RSR shot, which had to be very carefully timed. To centre the car in such a precise space, I had to start the shot a half-exposure before it would reach that point. Thus ending a half-exposure’s travel after, this would average out to centre. Had I burst-fired from first sight, one frame might have ended and the next started as the car reached target, leaving the car uneven or cut off in the shadow frame. By practicing on the last few cars of the preceding race session it was possible to feel out the correct start point for my selected shutter speed.
The winning frame was taken at 1/40 at f/10 and ISO 50 using a polarized knockabout 24-70 f/2.8 workhorse without lens stabilization, and was one of only three snaps of the car taken on that pass. Editing was minimal: mild saturation, a contrasty RGB S curve to deepen darks and highlight the brights, and a cool colour grade balanced by some warmth in the shadows.
Composition being the priority in this vision, I’m pleased to have been able to integrate that technique while still nailing the precise comp I’d envisioned — not least of all with the limited opportunity before me. I might’ve liked a slower drag, but I’m tickled to have received such enthusiasm from my peers for it.
Finally, in our Managing Editor’s punishment for my self-effacement here: the words of the judges:
“[The entry] stands out as a unique entry in the competition, capturing a dynamic moment that feels both exhilarating and cinematic. The framing is masterfully executed, drawing the viewer’s eye along the path of the car while the motion blur on the left side of the frame enhances the sense of speed and urgency. The car appears to be escaping both the shadow above and the other elements in the scene, creating a thrilling narrative of freedom and movement. Even as it exits the frame, this composition evokes a sense of anticipation, making the image not just a snapshot but a compelling story in itself.“