Rules are meant to be broken! - Shooting sports with a slow shutter

Last night, Connor asked me if I would shoot some images at his hockey game. Since I have done this so many times before, and had so many of the "typical hockey shots", I thought that I would try something new this time. Normally I try to aim for a shutter speed of at least 1/500 of a sec to freeze the action, but this time I changed the camera to shutter priority and slowed the shutter to 1/30 of a sec. My goal was to follow the players (panning with them at the exact same speed as their movement) to get them in focus but blur much of the background. This yielded some pretty cool shots.

The goal here was to get a sharp picture of their faces, while showing movement in their legs and arms.


Although some people may be distracted by the out of focus skaters, I like the way that it shows the action on the rink.


This shot was a little different from the rest. Connor's face is not tack sharp, but I really like the motion of his skating stride.

This shot was the best example of what I was trying to capture. There is motion in Connor's body and the background, but his face is perfectly sharp. (If you click on this image, you can see it larger and see what I am talking about)

For those who are wondering, I took about 700 images at this slow shutter speed to get 45 images that I liked. This is not the easiest technique, and not one that I would recommend for all sporting events, but it was fun for a change.