I was sitting in an open cafe on the first floor of the Queen Victoria Building in George Street, Sydney,  camera at the ready to do some candid street type photography of the passers by.

Looking around I saw, in the stainless steel underside of an adjacent  escalator, reflections of the people passing by on the floor beneath me. A golden opportunity for some movement photos.

To avoid problems with the light I selected ISO 640. That setting suits my camera well when the light is only adequate. I wanted to freeze the motion of the people crossing the tiled floor so I selected 1/8th second at aperture f5.6.  I should mention that from where I was sitting I couldn’t see the floor beneath me, only the reflection in the stainless steel sloping away above me and it was inappropriate for me to change my viewpoint.

Because the lighting was a mixture of fluorescent and incandescent I set my camera’s white balance at Auto to allow the camera to sort out the lighting issues. Then manually I selected the best focus point on the escalator and set the lens at 120mm . At this focal length, the only thing to be seen in the viewfinder was the reflected area on the lower floor. The following image shows, totally by a fluke and not my intention, a stationary foot as the body to which it was attached blurred with motion. The image was made hand held, elbows braced against the cafe table.

As the notes for today include a reference to panning, I stood in my back yard adjacent to a main road to photograph the speedsters as they shot past. I didn’t have to wait long. Just as I’d set my camera at 1/10 second at f18, ISO 200, 70mm lens, I heard a car approaching from my left. I began to pan from right to left and as the car hit the centre of the viewfinder I pressed the go button. Why did I pan from right to left? I wanted to capture the wheels of the car turning and their action would have been less interesting had I panned from left to right along the car’s direction of travel. Here is the result:

I was unable to resist putting this next ‘movement’ image here. As you can guess, the event is a cycle race in town centre. I think it’s a fun shot with the casual observer and his dog stationary waiting to cross the road while the peloton rockets past. I took the shot laying down on the medium strip in the centre of the road to the amusement of other spectators. My camera settings were 1/40 second at f11, ISO 200, 24mm lens. My point of focus was the dalmatian.

Hope you had as much fun looking as I did shooting.