Commuting Downtown: Vehicles and People Along the Way
I have been working downtown the past couple of weeks which finds me riding the bus, rolling on the train and walking around the core. It makes for great opportunities to photograph people and vehicles – two themes I quite like working with.
With the businessman striding past, along with the absurd text, the lines and the display designer behind the glass collaborating to create an interesting scene.
I will be downtown for a while longer so there will be more to come on these two themes.
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The C Train in Motion
Here, I panned with the one of Calgary’s C Train cars as it moved out of downtown towards the southern reaches of the line. I used a longer exposure, 1/4 of a second, to really stretch the lines of light and dark in background. Usually I pan the trains at between 1/10 and 1/20 of a second as that allows for decent blur streaks in the background and achieving a sharp subject (the train or sometimes its occupants). Longer exposures can end up a blurry mess quite easily. In this image, my panning matched the train’s movement pretty well so outline at the front of the vehicle is clearly that of a train. Not sharp but I think there is a good balance between the background blur and the lines and edges of the train. I think there is a lot of movement in this photo which was my intent.
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Highway 8 – a road between city and country
Highway 8 starts about 30 kilometers west of Calgary in Alberta, Canada and runs through the open prairie around Springbank directly east into the city. When I do go into Calgary, this is the road I usually take and, in the winter, it is often during daybreak on the way in and dusk when I’m heading home. I’m working on a longer term project on roads, what is at either end, what springs up in between and how we move along them. These photographs have been shot with this project in mind but, equally, as an acknowledgement of this particular stretch of asphalt that I spend a fair amount of time traversing.
The mountains dominate the view once I clear the city and heading west. With great ease they pull me out of the work mind and back into my personal space. The longer drive is appreciated on those days when a longer transition is needed.
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Calgary’s C-Train Commute
Working with a slow shutter speed, I wanted to see what kind of detail I could of the commuters riding into the downtown core on one of Calgary’s light rail transit trains. For this image I panned with the train as it sped past, trying to pivot quick enough to briefly match the rail car’s velocity. The goal being to capture the detail inside the train while blurring the scenery outside. This technique has been applied to all types of motion by many photographers and creates an interesting effect.
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Exposure details: 1/13 second, f/4.0 at ISO 400 using a Canon 1D Mark III with 70-200 lens at 200mm.
Christopher Martin Photography 