More often than not, panning is overlooked and appears to be way down on our list of style choices when it comes to railway photography – yet the rewards of a good panned shot can give that extra angle and outlook on our hobby.
Panning shots tend to work when side on to your subject; I have never found it to work at other angles. In some ways, it has a similar failure rate to night photography, which can be high, but with digital there is nothing to lose, so it is worth the experiment.
On several occasions I have attempted panning, only to find that the images were unsuitable due to a too slow shutter speed where nothing is sharp at all, the subject going too fast, or both the image and background sharp, where too high a shutter speed was used or I did not hold camera steady enough following the train. I recently attempted one with WR 4-6-0 No. 7029 near Dorridge with
