The Story Behind the Picture: All at Ease

All at Ease won first prize in the DPS 2011 2^nd Progress Print competition for Ian Stafford and was well received on the Folio Forum, i-witness.

“I had to laugh a little when this picture was featured in the Durham Times recently, the capture ended with ‘Do you have memorable pictures of the North-East?’, Hah…..it was taken in Brugge!

Just like the Netherlands, the Belgians love to use bicycles and Brugge is full of them. I watched many go up and down the road in which our hotel was situated and decided that, as I had never shot using the ‘panning’ technique, this was an excellent opportunity to try. I pre-visualised the image of a woman in pastel coloured clothing going past a brick building without any distracting features/posters/signs etc and didn’t have to walk far from the hotel to position myself.

I stood on the opposite side of the road and pre-focused a little way off the kerb. With my feet parallel and facing directly towards where I hoped to capture the shot, I turned my body to the right and smoothly followed cyclists, continuing to pan after pressing the shutter as in a golf swing (see,reading all those ‘how-to’ articles does come in handy sometimes!). Two cyclists fitted the scene as intended and I managed to get what I thought were pretty good attempts, beginners luck! Looking back, I’d have preferred the cyclist captured in between the windows.

The shot was taken using a Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 at 62mm, f10 @ 1/60 (generally you would use a slightly slower speed than this for panning). Very little was done post capture, the usual levels and sharpening, a slight desaturation and a light vignette to pull you into the picture using Lightroom.”

Ian Stafford