Posts tagged “rush hour

Blurred lines downtown

Calgary in motion - © Christopher Martin-9522Fuji X100s – 1/30th of a second, f/2.0 at iso 1250

Last week I was downtown for the day and before leaving the urban cacophony spent a bit of time dragging my shutter among my fellow commuters. It had been quite a long time since I was downtown during the evening rush hour and I enjoyed panning with the C-trains, shooting in the middle of the cross walk and looking for ways to capture the movements of people and their conveyances.

Walk - © Christopher Martin-9551Fuji X100s – 1/15th of a second, f/2.0 at iso 640

Downtown Calgary - © Christopher Martin-9509Fuji X100s – 1/150th of a second, f/2.0 at iso 1600

Drive - © Christopher Martin-9573Fuji X100s – 1/30th of a second, f/2.0 at iso 1600 


Downtown: commuter and driver

I am enjoying the people I meet and see during my commutes into and out of downtown.  The photographs of these two gentlemen drew my attention when I was looking through my recent pictures.  The driver was a quick shot taken as my car passed by a bus – I didn’t realize that the bus driver was looking at me.  It certainly makes the picture.  The man waiting for the train had a stately, refined manner which stood out from the standard commuter.  I am taking queues from this man’s sartorial tastes.

More to come from the commuting into Calgary’s core…

 

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Downtown Train: Centre Street Station

The city was still fairly dark when I was downtown early on Wednesday.  I dragged the shutter, using long exposures mixed with some panning to capture the motion of the commuter trains coming into and heading out of the core.  Many of the trains were sparsely populated with passengers with the rush of people yet to start building.  This afforded the opportunity pick out individual riders and follow them through the exposure to give the illusion of freezing the person while surrounding them with movement.

The station matched the trains at that hour – both were pretty quiet.

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In this image


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.


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.

 

 

Click on the image for a larger version

 

Exposure details: 1/13 second, f/4.0 at ISO 400 using a Canon 1D Mark III with 70-200 lens at 200mm.