Sports Photography How To

Josh Katz is a young photographer with great skills and an ability to teach them to others. In this tutorial he provides eight steps for adding impact to action photos with a simple camera panning technique.

The idea is to follow a moving subject with your camera while shooting with a slow shutter speed. This isolates the subject from a blurred background to create a heightened motion effect. As Katz explains, you don’t need special equipment for panning, and any camera enabling you to select shutter speeds, either in a Manual or Shutter Priority mode, will work.

Katz discusses preliminary camera settings, including the best shutter speed to use for different types of action. He demonstrates a variety of focusing techniques and how to best position yourself relative to the moving subject. Finally, Katz provides a number of image-editing techniques for enhancing your results.

You can find more tips from Katz on his YouTube channel, and be sure to watch a tutorial of his we posted earlier with everything you need to know about shooting stellar shots of starlit skies.