Zoom fall

I got inspired one evening while shooting in Yosemite (not hard to believe) and decided to try a technique that I haven't used in a while. If you have a DSLR with a zoom lens attached, you've got everything you need to try this. The idea behind it is to zoom the lens either in or out while you're taking the picture. You need a somewhat longish shutter speed to notice the effect, so late evening is a great time to give this a shot. All the images below were created with this technique and no additional blurring or zooming tomfoolery after the fact. Yes, tomfoolery.

You can do this hand held or with a tripod. Having the camera on a tripod makes repeating things much easier and you might find it easier to hone in on a certain look. I shot all of these hand held, partly because I didn't have my tripod with me (um, yeah) and also because I enjoy the freedom of just moving and shooting. But mostly the former. Ok, so you got your DSLR with zoom lens, you've got your camera set up to give you a proper exposure with a longish shutter speed, and maybe you've even got something cool to shoot. Zooming in and zooming out while you take the picture give different looks so you should try both. One may be more appealing to you and/or work better with whatever your subject is. Start by zooming your lens all the way in (or out) and focus. Keep your finger half pressed on the shutter button so your focus will remain the same as you start to zoom. After you start to zoom, go ahead and take the picture and keep zooming until the exposure's over. That's it!

Now there's all kinds of variations on this technique. You can not zoom all the way, not start zooming right away, play with your focus point, change you shutter speed, etc. It's a great way to experiment, and you might just come up with something you like!