Motorsport Photography – 3 Things To Improve Your Picture

You know the feeling. You’ve bought countless numbers of motorcycle magazines and admired the amazing race photos of crazy fast machines battling it out for that last inch on the race track. You totally psyche yourself up in order to be ready the next time at a race where you’ll be ready to capture some pictures just like in the magazines. You are now officially interested in motorsport photography and ready to rock and roll. Now how is this actually accomplished?

1) A DSLR Is A Must

It’s been said that pure talent is enough in most types of photography, with equipment playing a minor role however motorsports is one of the rare exceptions where you definitely need special equipment. A good example of this would be when a person with average skills can capture a beautiful landscape image with a regular point and shoot camera however a newbie could botch it up with a state of the art DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex). With the motorcycles traveling at speeds in excess of 200mph, all the skills in the world could not help you capture that: You need a DSLR. More specifically it’s the outright speed and control a DSLR offers.

Main features that are important is a high frames per second shooting mode, high-speed auto focus and the near absence of shutter lag. The faster the above the better although even an entry-level DSLR these days will do the job. A higher end, faster DSLR will just make your life easier. As for owning lenses, obviously the longer zoom range will give you more options but having a short lens doesn’t mean that everything is hopeless. Work with what you have, and don’t spend time dreaming about what you don’t have.

3) Knowing The Track Layout

Unless you’ve been to the track numerous times, it’s important to explore the track as best as you can to scope out acceptable potential spots to shoot from. If you have never been to a racetrack before at all, it’s simple to get caught off guard by just how monstrous a track can be. Many times just moving from one side of the track to the other can easily be a 20 minute walk or much more.

When it’s time to shoot the race, you want to know exactly where you can go after you’ve finished grabbing all the pics you want at a particular spot. Being unprepared will probably get you stuck in the same place the entire race or you’ll miss numerous laps (possibly even the rest of the race) by walking around trying to discover another spot to shoot from. A race weekend will usually include practice sessions for the racers. Remember you can use them as your practice sessions also.

3) Totally Embracing The Sport

Having a good understanding of the sport is not necessary to take great motorsports shots but it can at least decrease the learning curve a bit and allow you to quickly move up the ranks to being a motorsport photographer. For example take a look at motorcycle racing. Looking to get a picture of racers dragging their knees? It’s best to position yourself at tight, relatively high speed corners to get a good one.

How about a rider tucked in low behind the windscreen? Keep away from braking zones where they need to sit up to prepare for corner entry. Need to grab a stand-up wheelie shot? No one will be trying any celebratory antics in the middle of a race, so wait until the end.

It’s possible the above three tips may give you a head start of sorts but what they can’t replace is practice and the inevitable amount of trial and error you’ll endure. The very first time you attempt this may be accompanied by a rude awakening but once you get used to the speed of your subjects and the capabilities of your equipment all will come together. The most important thing is to have fun!

Basic Exposure Techniques

 

Lighting plays the major role in the photographing process. This is because bad lighting will obscure the photo’s subjects and composition, leaving little to be appreciated. Good lighting, on the other hand, defines the form of your subjects and show them in vivid colors. That’s why the camera should be set to collect the correct amount of light.

Exposure is the amount of light that is collected by the photographic medium, whether it is a film or a digital sensor, while shooting a single photograph. There is no fixed value of a correct amount of light, because it depends on the available lights, the objects, and the photographer’s judgment. However, it is safe to say that there’s an acceptable exposure and an unacceptable exposure. Most exposures that obscure details while not adding any artistic value are considered unacceptable.

Low lighting conditions require high exposures to allow more light into the sensor, brightening up the final photograph. If less exposure is used, the photograph will become darker as a result of the underexposure. As for bright light conditions, low exposure will be enough to gather sufficient amount of light to produce a photo with good lighting. Otherwise, the photograph will be overexposed, having too many bright areas, the bright subjects loosing their details, and the dark subjects looking too bright..

Exposure relies on two factors: shutter speed (exposure time) and aperture. Shutter speed determines how long the sensor will be exposed to light. Slow shutter speed means more exposure, while fast speed will allow less exposure. As for aperture, it determines how wide the lens is opened. Narrow aperture will let less light pass through it than a wide aperture. ISO speeds also affect the degree of exposure. Higher ISO speeds will make the sensor more sensitive to light, reducing exposure, but it will add undesired noise to the photos.

In manual exposure mode, aperture and shutter speed are usually set independently. As for automatic exposure settings, the camera will determine the degree of exposure needed according to the light metering technique used. Exposure compensation is a method of adjusting the exposure by adding fixed exposure values, which is also very useful for camera owners who don’t have manual exposure settings.

Photographs with very dark and very bright spots will not show correct exposure on all their parts using any type of cameras. Usually, photographers take the same photograph at different exposures, and combine them together using software programs.

A good approach to learn more about exposure is to look at the exposure settings of your previous photographs, and compare them Look for the exposure time (shutter speed), the aperture, the ISO speed, and the exposure compensation in the data that is stored in your image files. As a result, you will get a clearer idea on how exposure can impact your photos.

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Close Ups – Filling the Frame

An ordinary composition of a photograph will contain one or more subjects as focal points and a surrounding consisting of other objects. Based on all these elements, an observer will be able to recognize, the subject, the environment, and the message. All this is good, but what if another impact on the observer is desired? What if you want to leave little hints, in order to keep him guessing?

Boring surroundings may have a very bad effects on your subject, because, most probably, they will not have elements to balance the photographs, leaving a lot of empty spaces. An effective remedy to this is to fill the frame with your subject, so as to get rid of these empty spaces.

Sometimes it is even better to include nothing but your subject. For example, consider this situation in which you are photographing a wild animal at the zoo. With a normal composition, you will probably include the animal, the cage, and maybe some spectators. Getting rid of all the element except for the animal itself, may make the photograph look as if it was taken in the wild. The ambiguity resulted from close-ups lead observers use their imaginations to complete the picture .A close-up on two hands holding each others will strike a certain emotion that may be different from one person to the other, depending on his experience. Here, all you did is that you removed the subjects’ personalities, so as to give a space for the observer to think.

Portraits are usually a strong candidate for closeups. Sure you can take a great portrait with your subject in an interesting environment, but you can also get a very nice one too with just focusing on him. Filling the frame with your subject will produce a very personal look. Getting even closer to just include the face – sometimes with eye contact – can bring a feeling of amicability, as if you were staying face to face with the subject. Close-ups on other body parts produce great photos too; they may create an abstract feel, or emphasize a certain action.

Close-ups also suit still life photographs very well. This allows you to see usual things in very unusual ways, revealing many details that were not obvious before. This kind of photography is usually used in stock and product photography.

A frame can be filled by walking towards your subject, zooming on it, or by cropping a photograph. While zooming is an on-camera process, cropping is usually done using photo-editing software, giving you more flexibility to set your composition, but with sacrificing the image’s original size.

The simplest compositions may sometimes be the richest. So use your imagination, and make your audience use theirs.

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