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.

Freezing the movement and using the background to add to the image works if you have the background to carry the image

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 is making sure that the horizontal path the camera takes is the same as the one the object (car takes) the more undulations that one of the other path has that isnt replicated in the other will result in a softer image.
Parallax shift – Whoa count those A’s basicly with out getting into a physic degree this is the amount of variation between back out side corner moving and the front inside corner. because the outside corner has further to travel in relation to the camera it has to move faster resulting in only part of the car being sharp. (with me so far?) The rate of parallax decreases the closer to the parallel the two objects become.
Bad Motion Blur

this is where the movement of the camera is slower or faster than thatof the object meaning that the object is burled laterally.
The great thing is that when you know what your doing these problems are a snap to fix. HEres how.
Improving your Smooth Motion
To improve the fluidness of your pan the best thing you can do is wedge the camera into your body (having a SLR or large compact really helps at this point) grip the lense in your left hand
with your arm pointing down so your elbow is bent 180 degrees and is facing the floor. Now Pull your arm into your body press the camera into your face, not so hard that your disfigure your nose but hard enough so that it dosent wobble around. With your right hand (trigger hand) you want to keep the angle as parallel to the floor as you can (see diagram). As you pan make sure that you twist from the hips to ensure you pan at a constant hight.

Notice how the front and rear of the bike are not sharp but the middle is, this is caused by the shift in parallax .

Reducing incorrect Motion Blur

Motion blur is the intended out come of this exercise how ever we don’t want it on the focus of the frame only the background. To insure that the object stays sharp and the background stays blury follow these simple steps.

1. As soon as the car becomes visible start tracking its movement
2. Continue to track its movement even after you have taken the photo
3. Make sure that your shutter speed isn’t too slow, each person has their own limit experiment to find yours as you become more used to following the movement and adjusting to the changing rate of execration you will find you will be able to drop to slower speeds. As a starting point for a Top Fuel dragster somewhere in the relm of 1/800 should give you a nice basis to work from.

How to set your camera up.

The best way to set your camera up for this sort of work is to select shutter priority mode. This is where you tell the camera what shutter speed you want in fractions of a second e.g 1/250 means the shutter will be open for 250th of a second. the camera then works out what the rest of the settings should be to ensure a correct exposure. The bigger the fraction the less time the shutter is open for E.g 1/1000 is open for 1000th of a second and 1/50 is open for a 50th of a second.

Once you become more familiar with the workings of your camera you can also use manual mode which will allow you so control all aspects of the camera and thus gives you more controll over how the finished image will look.

Practice is the key to constancy.

Hope thats of some help. Let me know how you get on and as always feedback is always welcome.

Technically a great pan, aesthetically its naff but skill wise this is what is possible with a little practice

1. A dslr
2. A timelapse trigger (some cameras have one built in) canon do the tc 80n3 that works great (its what i use) other after market versions are available.
3.A tripod
4.Photolapse CLICK (or other image sequence stitching program)

Ok first things first set up the camera on the tripod and frame the shot you want.

Next plug in and set up the trigger (how to set it up will vary from model to model) and select a suitable delay. For most things such as sun sets where it is moving quite quickly (all over in the space of a hour or so) Ill set the trigger to take one frame every 5 seconds for a flower something like once every 30 minutes .

Ok now to set the camera up first things first set the camera to Manual set a suitable exposure set up.
quick tip: if your photographic quickly moving objects (cars people ect) it is advisable to use a longer shutter speed to get some motion blur to make it look more realistic

Then select a suitable focus point this is totaly dependent on the scene use your photographers initiative. At the point once the camera is in focus turn the lens to Manual focus.

ok the final step set a custom WB setting for the current conditions.

then hit the start button sit back and wait

Once all your images are shot load them into there own folder on your pc
open up photolapse
Find the folder in the left hand finder window
Click load files from current folder
Click Mark all
Decide on a frame rate (depends on your delay between photos but I normal start at about 12 and then play from there)
Click Create Movie and wait
Sit back and admire your creation !

For some insparation for timelapse hit  youtube

So what is a safety I hear you cry! Well put simply a safety is the shot that you know works that you know the papers like and will get published if you fail to get good action for what ever reason. Once you have your safety shots man heading ball, line out in rugby, bat on ball and so on you can then concentrate on getting interesting action packed shots, taking risks (trying something new that might not work) and generally being more adventurous and pushing your photographic skills. Sports is a game of patients you May be soaked to your skin, sat up to your knees in snow or be involved in a force 9 gale but if there is enough light and the game is carrying on its worth sticking it out as you never truly know what’s going to happen. You cold pack the camera away and be walking to the gate because your too cold and you’ve had enough when the new signing for the home team hits a perfect over the head volley and clears it into the top corner of the goal. What a moment missed!

Its also well worth getting to know the people off the pitch if you have a highly emotional coach keep a eye on him see what makes him explode with emotion and anticipate it and be ready for the shot as he throws the water-bottle back into the dug out in disgust. Also keep a eye on the fans they can really make a photo and help tell the story as well as offering a different angle to what you see on the pitch.

harp shots.
No one likes a soft photo, Most modern DSLR’s will give you a shutter speed of up to 1/8000th of a second some go even higher. This is enough to catch pretty much everything with pint point sharpness. The general rule is that you should never hand hold a lens any slower than its relative shutter speed e.g if you was using a 300mm lens you should never hand hold any slower than 1/300th of a second. Gadgets such as Image stabilization and Vibration reduction allow you to break this to an extent but as a rule of thumb it works well.

The shutter speed needed to freeze action depends on what your shooting (this goes back to knowing your sport) how ever for football you need ideally 1/1250th of a second how ever you can get away with having anything as low as 1/500th of a second and still get sharp images depends on your technique and the type of shot your going for. If you have a head on shot of a player running towards you you can get away with a slower shutter speed than if you have a player lunging across the frame. To really maximize your abilities to get a sharp shot its worth investing in a good mono-pod to give you a stable platform to shoot from and thus reduce large amounts of camera shake

That Concludes the how to series that covers the very basics of sport photography over the course blogs dissecting shooting style and techniques will be written to help further your abilities.

We left of part one after talking about Camera’s and lighting (or the lack of) If you haven’t read part one yet start HERE
Location
The most important step to achieving a good sports photograph is attaining the correct vantage point, this is often easier said than done as access is highly controlled at sporting events, more for your own safety than anything as there is nothing worse than being on the side lines at a rugby match as some 25 stone bloke gets taken into touch taking you and more importantly your £6000 camera set up with him! Its a pretty scary thing to experience.

Sports photography is all about the bring the viewer close to the action, making them feel like there are part of the winning play. This is achieved threw selecting the right location and getting as close as possible to the action. if your lucky and get a press pass you can be on the side lines how ever positions will still be limited as you will be there with 10 or 20 other photographers all wanting the same thing. Ok so you’ve selected the best location to catch the best action from as close as possible, thats half the battle won the next is finding the angles that allow you to create a clean and uncluttered background.

The Camera
In most forms of photography the equipment isn’t too important, you can make do with very little impact on the quality of your photos. for example you don’t have to have a £3000 d lite studio set up in order to take good portrait you can make do with a set of general purpose flood lights. How ever the same can’t be said for sports photography. As I’ll go on to explain in location In sports you are always limited to how close you can get. Just how close is defined by the sport, for basket ball you can sit in under the hoop and be able to get good shots from the entire court using something like a 70-200. How ever for football 70-200 is probably going to be too short and you need something like a 300 or even 400mm lens depending on the size of the pitch.
A general rule of thumb to work out what lens would be best suited to the situation is on a Full Frame DSLR for every 100mm you add to your focal length you will get about 9m closer to the action.

The other requirement of sports photography is lens speed or to be precise the f stop value, sure you could purchase a 70-300 f5.6-6.3 lens for a couple of hundred pounds, but come half 8 at night in mid december when the football match is in full swing thats not going to be able to let enough light in to give you a high enough shutter speed to freeze the action, resulting in very blurry pictures!

I’ve mentioned what’s important in a good sports lens the other key part of a camera is the body in the days of film (back in the dark ages) most medium to pro end bodies were nearly equal, how ever since the advent of digital things are not quite as easy a good sports camera needs two things good Auto Focus speed so it can easily lock on and track fast moving objects in low light levels and also High ISO sensitivity with low noise levels. Its fine having a camera that can shoot at iso 12600 but if the image look like a multi colors snow storm its not going to be much good ! Also features like weather sealing and a high frame rate are a bonus but not a must have.

If you was looking to go pro and needed a shopping list something like the following would get you started
1dmkiii @2,400 x 2 = 4800
400mm f2.8 l is = 4889
70-200 f2.8 l is = 1299
16-35f2.8 l = 1119
Grand total =£12107
That would get you started how ever most full time sports photography will have substantially more equipment that that listed above. Ok so an amateur could get buy with less but it wouldn’t be the ideal set up.

Lighting

Lighting or should I say bad lighting is the bain of my life there is never the perfect light it is always a compromise too much grey sky giving dull drab images and direct sunlight giving harsh contrasty shadows but it gets even worse than just the odd bit of cloud the uk’s passion of football is played through the winter during the rain, snow and wind (why they don’t play the summer I don’t know) meaning that allot of the games are played under dark skies and flood lights. This is where high ISO and low F stops pay off as for most no Premiership pitches the pitch is just about bright enough for the players to see the ball which equates to about 3200 f2.8 1/200th of a second which in sports terms is slow. Flash is a big no no for most sports how ever when you get inside into the realms of basket ball you can get away with mounting strobes in the corners of the room and bouncing the light off the celling the advent of the modern speedlight (canon 580ex nikon sb28 etc) coupled with the ingenious Pocket wizard means you relatively cheaply throw up a flash in opposite corners of the hall and have high power reliable light to work with that doesn’t blind the players.

Part two comming soon !

Part two of how to take sports photos