Motorsport Photography Tutorial 101

The paramount thing to remember when going after a motorsport photo is to have a image, angle, shape, anything just something that is what you want to accomplish from every image, treat it as if you were stepping into the studio with a model . Too many people wrongly that you can just turn up fire away at 12fps and try to catch the right moment, that is as far from the truth as you can get. You will end up with a computer full of “snapshotty” images that all look similar.

The first thing you have do is evaluate what you have to work with. How far away from the track are you does your lens give you a frame filling image or do you need to crop? Are the competitors coming straight at you or going past at an angle? Stand where you think the image is watch the cars then decided what you need to do to maximise the impact. Is it cause its launching over the curbs no wheels on the floor and sparks coming from the belly pan, is it the rear wheel locking up on the way in to the hairpin . Answer this and you have taken the first step to producing a good image.

So what is a good motorsport image?

Well the in the most basic form it is the portrayal of speed and excitement that you experience as you stand there in your high-vis vest on the track side. The two ways to do this are Freeze the action, turn the shutter speed up and stop them in their tracks. Panning , this is when you blur the surrounding and keep the car nice and sharp, for more info on perfecting panning check out my Panning tutorial Improve your pan !!!

You need to work out when to uses these techniques to achieve the sensation of speed. For example When the car is screaming past you down the straight at 200 mph its not the best time to use a high shutter speed, it’ll make the car look static where as its better to pan blur the back ground and keep the car crispy and sharp. Where as if the car is hopping over the curb coming straight at you trying to pan really isn’t a great Idea, turn the speed up and freeze the car as its flying over the curb.

Lets look at these techniques in a little more detail

Panning

Im not going to discuss the dark art of panning here, if you keep up with the blog you’ve probably read the Panning Tutorial if not hit the link to get up to speed. How to pan like a pro

Freeze the motion

This is something that’s not normally done in motorsport, as I said early its all too easy to make the car look parked and you loose the speed and excitement . However this does have a use but you’ve gotta use it sparingly and only when the time is right.

A good example of this is when you spot something that is happing very fast for example a car lifting a wheel in a corner . 90 percent of the time you want a little motion in the wheels just to show that yes it is moving, however there is occasions when you really need to freeze the moment, the best example of this that I have is this picture of Havoc with a fuel leak, I had noticed that there was a drip from the fuel line during the burn out at which point fuel pressure is less, I took a gamble and turned the shutter speed up in the hope that on full throttle the leak would worsen and create something interesting. Working with the knowledge that I knew the rear tyres word crinkle showing the presence of power and motion if felt safe in the knowledge that I could turn the shutter speed up but not loose the sensation of speed. My gamble paid off and the image worked.

Motocross is another great opportunity to turn the shutter speed up and get away with it. just make sure that there is a good bit of action in the photo that will make up for the frozen subject. Obviously if the rider is in the air, it will have the needed motion, or if there is a big rooster tail of dirt behind the subject, there is plenty to show that something is happening. In these cases its more about what is happening around the subject that shows the action needed.

A general rule is if there is more going on in the frame than just the wheels turning you can get away with turning the shutter speed up.

Shooting Head on

This shows the least amount of motion or movement as you have to freeze the car other wise it ends up blurred. However it can be a dramatic shot that can show the excitement of motorsport.

Start with the basics, Check out the background this is critical as it’ll be very visible and if there is something distracting be it an ambulance topless page three model or dirty old scrap yard what ever it is if it draws your eye more than the subject the photo is going to fail before you even get started.

Try to get the cleanest background you can to off set the car against. This is part one of a two part attack on isolating the car and really making it pop from the frame.

Part two is to use the lens wide open sit it on f2.8 or what ever the widest you can get. This will throw the background in to the Depth of field.

The depth of field trick also works if you have a dirty background and have nothing you can do about it. You can open the lens up blow the background out of focus and try and gain some differential between subject and background.

A final word

Practice is everything you can read as many different tutorials and how-to’s as you want but till you get out there make your own mistakes and lean in a practical environment you will never get better so get off that ass of yours and get track side.

Hope that was of some interest as always comments and feedback welcome

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 25th, 2009 at 10:03 pm. It is filed under Tutorials and tagged with 101, Dominic Romney, dragracing, How to, learning, Motorsport, photography, Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.