This week’s theme is to zoom your lens or move your camera while taking the photo. That means you set a slightly long (or very long) exposure and create movement with your camera.

Of course all the examples I have involve flash and moving the camera, since I don’t have a zoom lens and I like my subjects to be in focus. The advantage of using flash for this is that your subject (or whatever the flash hits most) will still be frozen (at least somewhat, depending on shutter speed). Then you can move your camera around to cause any background lights to look like they’re moving. Another way to do this is to zoom your lens or rotate your camera.

If you don’t use flash, everything will likely be a blur, unless your subject is also moving the same way and speed as the camera. A real challenge here would be to try to move your camera the same speed as your subject to keep them sharp and the background in motion. We’ll get to this in the last challenge, panning, but you can try it out this week. I think it would be really cool to try to track your subject while zooming. You can also pause for a bit to get part of the photo sharper.


If you have any questions, join us in the Facebook group. I’ll be checking in there daily to see your work and help you achieve the best results.

If you’re just finding this now, you can check out the full list and more information on the challenge here. You can follow me on Instagram at @documentyourdaytoday and use the hashtag #dtd52weeks so others doing the challenge can see your work.