Mountain Bike Racing, Woodlands, TX.
Posted by rjdesign | Filed under Shoots
Influenced by a local friend Rey, my brother-in-law Mark and personal interest. I decided to attend and shoot a local mountain bike race. I had no idea how the event was conducted, nor had I walked the course in advance to establish shooting points (more on that ahead).
The seasonally “iffy” weather – rain, then dry, cold then warm, cooperated over the past few days allowing for race-ready conditions, – it’s on. So dressed in grubs, I arrived at the site to embarked on a “walk-about” to find some strategic spots from which to shoot. After 45-minutes of Bambi-like wandering about, I questioning whether I should have just back tracked well earlier. Nah (insert caveman grunt), I summoned my superior survival skills, instincts fully firing – although a compass would have been nice – my bloodhound like proboscis sniffed-out a pond I’d past early in the hike, quickly leading me back to whence I came. Where are the racers?
Being overcast, and of very flat lighting, I found a couple spots along the way where light poked through the canopy – hoping to add some depth to the images. With subjects in motion, it’s often ideal to portray that motion with blur created by setting an appropriately slow shutter speed in conjunction with careful panning (following the speed of the motion). Alot of factors come into play for a proper effect – that’s where practice and experience come into play –neither of which I have for biking events. There is also a popular technique called ”dragging the shutter.” Technically speaking, you set the shutter speed to allow for the subjects wheel/pedal motion and the natural light and then set your flash to fire as the shutter begins to close. The effect is a brightly lit and focused subject with a motion trail following the direction of travel established by the slow (opening) shutter speed. I got some of the effect but would have to slow the shutter even further to get the more pronounced effect I’d prefer (will do next time). -R-
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