how to shoot (moving) vehicles

[wulinka]

The variety of vehicles that are crowding the streets here is quite amazing, and I would like to capture some of it.
There are overloaded bicycles, tricycles, motorized and roofed tricycles, man-pulled carts, tractors, or basically any moving gear put in front of your cargo - there you go.

I have tried many times to get a good picture of one of the public buses to start with. I want a (series of) picture(s) from which the viewer can hear the rattle and clanging of lose parts as the bus goes by, can get the feeling of riding in a bus with no mufflers (as in both, buffer and exhaust), can smell the bad air inside at overcrowded rushhours, the delight you feel everytime you arrive somewhere and the vehicle has not broken down on the way. I would like to show the way the buses go around the curve way too fast, barely slow down towards the bus stop as the bus assistant already opens the door and announces the destination of the line, the hopping on and off of passengers often on the roll....

But somehow I can't get them framed. neither portrait nor landscape seem suitable, the angle is always wrong, even if I aim at 8x10 format crops. also I should be doing something like panning to convey the motion of it all.
I also tried using the flash to improve the lighting in the pics, where riders of a bike etc most often appear too dark against the lighter (sky) background, but wasn't very successful with it.

Anyway, I feel like all I have got so far is nowhere near what I want to get.
Can anyone help me?

any input is appreaciated much!

Uli

I put the pics back in, they are just showing how much I am NOT getting what I am thinking of....:

[shuttertalk]

Hey Uli,

I can see what you're trying to capture, and I know what you're talking about. I can probably offer a couple of suggestions :

Firstly, I think a wider perspective will give a better sense of the motion, and I would probably shoot landscape if the motion was across your field of view (as opposed to coming towards you).

Secondly, in general, photography is all about freezing motion, so using the default settings will make even cars on a racetrack look like they're parked there. As you suggested, you can try a technique called panning, which is where you use a slow shutter speed and then "track" the subject as it moves so that it is in focus, while everything else (background, etc.) is blurred. It takes quite a bit of practice...


There's a couple of threads here on panning:
http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=4376
http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=5048

Hope that helps...

[wulinka]

oooh, thanks for reading suggestions, I'm afraid today I am too tired, will have to look tomorrow! Good night, uli

[wulinka]

I'll take the pics out to make room, no use anyway

[Toad]

What happened to the photos? I was just coming back to comment on them...

[shuttertalk]

wulinka Wrote:I'll take the pics out to make room, no use anyway

Hey Uli, feel free to make full use of the forums upload (250k) or the shuttertalk gallery... we've got plenty of disk space.

[wulinka]

they suddenly seemed so large to me.

BTW, ST I have had problems trying to upload pics to my gallery. even though they are <350kb I get an error message about excessive dimension.... (could it be my gallery is full?)

[shuttertalk]

wulinka Wrote:they suddenly seemed so large to me.

BTW, ST I have had problems trying to upload pics to my gallery. even though they are <350kb I get an error message about excessive dimension.... (could it be my gallery is full?)

Hey thanks for pointing that out.. I've changed some settings - could you try again please and let me know how it goes?

[XeoX]

I've tried panning myself, too, but it wasn't very successful. If I have more time I will most certainly go and try it again. It was so much fun.

It was fun to see the emotions on drivers' faces when they saw that I'm taking photos of them. : D

[Toad]

Ahh.. there they are. #1 is fascinating because we don't see that kind of thing here, but photographically, I love #2. I think it also illustrates the panning with motion technique the best.

[wulinka]

Xeox, that's right, sometimes they are so surpised, and here they often see someone taking pictures for the first time ever.... i am nervous sometime they are going to hit something as they turn their heads to check out "the foreigner"....:o