Shooting From the Road /  by Todd Henson

There is a particular photographic technique, or perhaps style of photography, that I don’t practice often but have thoroughly enjoyed each time I have. And that is shooting from the road, from a moving vehicle. But before we get ahead of ourselves, lets get the required warning out of the way: Please only do this as a passenger. Never shoot from the road while driving. Seems pretty obvious, right?

Panning From the Road: Farm and Motion Blur

Farm from the road

My earliest successful attempt at shooting from the road might have been a short day trip my brother and I took many years back. While driving down a road I was taken by the scene of a farm and the green fields in front of it, so I had my brother drive back and forth several times. There was no one else on this road so we didn’t get in anyone’s way. What I was hoping for was a panned image where the barn and silos were sharply in focus but the green fields closer to the car were blurred from the motion of driving by them. I was remembering as a kid how much I enjoyed staring out the side window of a car watching the blurred fields beside the road. I wanted to capture something of this in a photograph.

This was a challenging photo to create. I needed a fast enough shutter speed, and good enough panning technique, to get the barn and silos in focus. But I needed a slow enough shutter speed to capture the motion blur of the nearby field. That’s why I had my brother drive back and forth several times so I could experiment with settings until I found something that worked for me. In the end I used the following lens/camera settings: 105mm, ISO 200, f/18, 1/20 sec.

A quick note on panning, if you’re not familiar with it. Panning is where you move your camera, tracking your subject as the subject moves (or in this case as we moved past the subject). It requires a steady hand if you’re using a slow shutter speed. It takes a lot of practice but it’s worth it, and lots of fun. Give it a try if you haven’t.

Panning From the Road: House in Focus

House from the road

Another example of panning from the road was of an attractive house my father and I saw as we were driving by on our way back from a visit to Blandy Experimental Farm. This time we didn’t drive back and forth, so I needed to get it right the first time. I wasn’t looking for blurred fields or grass, just capturing a nice image of the house and its lawn, so I used a much faster shutter speed. I shot a quick burst of frames as we passed by, panning with the house from the passenger side of the car. I had no idea at the time if I captured a decent image, but when I got home I was very pleased with the results. Here are the lens/camera settings I used: 80mm, ISO 400, f/8, 1/500 sec.

Shooting the Road Ahead

On the road

Another obvious way to shoot from a moving car is to photograph the road ahead. You still have options here as far as whether you want to capture some motion blur at the sides of the road or whether you want to try to freeze all motion. In my case for each of these I opted to mostly freeze all motion, so I used faster shutter speeds. I like the perspective these photos give, facing forward with the road in front, sometimes visible far into the distance. I think there’s an aspect of storytelling to it. Here are the lens/camera settings I used for the photographs below: 58 - 80mm, ISO 400, f/8.0, 1/640 sec.

Driving through the hills

On target at mile marker 100

Tips

One of the most important tips for shooting from the road is to experiment, try different settings, see how they affect the look of the image. You can introduce intentional blur, or you can try to reduce all blur and create sharp images, or some combination of them both. Try experimenting with depth of field. I really didn’t pay too much attention with that in these photos, but it’s an option you have.

This tip applies in just about any circumstance: practice! Panning can be a challenge so it’s worth practicing any chance you get. You can practice closer to home by tracking a bird in flight or a car in motion. Try to move the camera such that you keep the subject directly on the focus point.

Another tip is to use the vibration reduction feature of your lens or camera if they have it. This can help reduce some of the natural vibration you’ll encounter from the vehicle and help you get sharp images (if that’s what you’re trying for).

It might be a good idea to wash the windows of the car before setting out, especially if they’re very dirty. I’ll be honest, though, I didn’t do that for any of these photos.

Have you ever tried shooting from the road? What were your experiences? And if you haven’t tried this, do you think you will in the future? Let me know in the comments below.

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A View From Sky Meadows /  by Todd Henson

A View From Sky Meadows, January 2022

In mid-January of this year my father and I made the hour or so drive to Sky Meadows, one of the state parks in Virginia. We’d intended to hike some of the trails but after setting off we quickly realized it was far colder than we were comfortable with because of the bitingly strong wind and below freezing temperatures. So we turned around and headed back to the warmth of the car.

Before leaving we drove over to the other side of the park, near the visitor’s center, situated with a view of the valley and the mountains in the distance. It’s a very nice view, one I’m always drawn to, and yet I’ve not created any photographs of it that really work for me. But I did want to share that view with you so you can see it’s potential. And because that day, even around 10:30 am, there was some interesting color in the sky. Makes me wonder what it might be like earlier or later in the day.

The scene shifts throughout the year. Below is another photo I made of the same scene but from a slightly different location, with a different lens, and at a different time of year. The photo above was made in mid-January, 2022. The photo below was made in early October, 2011. I’d love to see this scene when the foliage changes.

A View From Sky Meadows, October 2011

And to give you an idea of the larger perspective, below is a 10-image stitched panorama of a larger part of the scene from January. You can see there’s still a little bit of snow remaining here and there.

A panoramic view of Sky Meadows, January 2022

Comparing these now I do think I prefer the perspective of the 2011 photo which was created out behind the visitor’s center. The photo from 2022 was created on the road leading to the visitor’s center.

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A Sequence of Snowscapes /  by Todd Henson

I’ve always been fascinated by a certain type of landscape photograph, one whose subject is simple enough and without anything recognizable that would provide a reference, such that you can’t immediately tell if what you’re seeing is something far away or very close up. Perhaps you’ve seen some of these? Examples are photographs of sand dunes viewed from planes flying overhead.

Here I present another set of examples, this time of snow and the ridges and patterns shaped by the wind. But in this case each of these photos are closeups. Not macro, but a small area of space, where I leaned over the snow and photographed from an angle to let the mid-afternoon sunlight create the shadows that accent the patterns.

Click on any of the photographs for a larger view.

I spent several minutes exploring this area, right at a corner along a road on Blandy Experimental Farm. I bent over at different angles, got lower, higher, tried tilting the camera this way and that. At one point my focus attracted the attention of someone who works at the location. We had a nice conversation about the location and photography before I went back to creating images.

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