Astro Visual Photography

I’d never been to a hill climb motorsport event so we drove up to Noosa Heads a couple of years ago to see the nationally famous Noosa Hill Climb event and shoot some snaps. The drivers were good. Too good for me because there was little action to catch with the camera. Getting creative was the only way to come away happy.

OBJECTIVE:

To catch some sort of ‘attitude’ in the car as it took a high speed corner.

COMPOSITION:

The car was the main subject here but totally filling the frame with the car doesn’t show the viewers where the car was or what it was doing. I chose a section of track that swept through the frame hoping to show how the car had driven in from one corner of the frame and would drive out through the opposite corner.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/800th – f5.6 – ISO 400. 300mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Hand held. No Flash.
The ISO of 400 allowed me to keep the shutter speed higher in order to capture the subject sharper than a slower shutter speed would have. In this case I wanted that so the road and it’s direction remained visible. I’d have lost that had I chosen a slow shutter speed and panned with the car.

POST PROCESSING:

Sharpening and curves/levels to increase contrast. Then, using layer masking, I applied a selective colour technique and finally a slight blur effect.

END RESULT:

I think this photo achieves what I wanted quite nicely. The Ferrari is definitely the subject and the car immediately grabs your eye. We can see the car has turned right into this corner and we can follow the road to see it must now prepare to turn left to exit out the top left of frame. That, combined with the blur treatment, gives a sense of movement and purpose to the car, leaving us in no doubt what it’s doing and where it’s going.

I’d never been to a rodeo before (or since at time of writing) but figured it might be something different to experience. It was. Lots of action to shoot. One of the events was Barrel Racing and after taking many shots I decided to get a bit more specific.

Barrel Racing on Horse Back

OBJECTIVE:

To show the strength of the horse and that strength in action.

COMPOSITION:

As the horses make the turns they must slow up abruptly, and then accelerate away again. The sand flying caught my attention and I chose to try to catch that. This turned out to be quite difficult as the barrel was quite close to me so framing the horse as I wanted was a tough job.
I wanted to show the horses legs and chest muscles if I could and I don’t mind saying that it took plenty of shots to get one I was happy with.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/3200th – f5 – ISO 640. 100mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Hand held. No Flash. Overcast day.
I would have liked to use a flash for fill, but no one else was, and there were plenty of cameras around. I figured it must disturb the horses so I decided I better be polite and shoot without it.

POST PROCESSING:

Slight sharpening, and minimal curves/levels to increase contrast.

END RESULT:

The final composition isn’t exactly what I’d hoped this time. I’d rather have the horse a bit further down the frame but I can live with it. The 1/3200th shutter stopped the action well enough and the sand helped to hide any noise the high ISO might have introduced.

Shooting sports can be a challenging exercise in many ways. Often photographers go for the highest shutter speeds they can to freeze the action and get sharply focused photos. I often do this also.

However, sometimes it’s nice to go for something a little different and that’s where this panning and 2nd sync shot came into being.

OBJECTIVE:

My original objective for this shot was to capture the mountain biker in focus but also show some speed and movement.

OBSERVATIONS:

It was early morning in a 24 hour race and the low light gave me the opportunity to shoot a slow shutter shot to blur the background as I moved the camera in time with the riders as they passed.

COMPOSITION:

I found a section of track where I could see the riders coming and they would actually swing around me as I stood near the exit of a turn. At the right moment I aimed to get the rider in shot but also show the track and speed of the rider by having the grass nicely blurred. With a wide angle focal length I figured I could get in close to enhance that speed and movement.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/25th – f8.0 – ISO 400 hand held at a 18mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Flash was set to 2nd Sync (or 2nd Curtain) and I panned with the riders as they entered the turn and hit the button as they entered the section I wanted to capture them in.

POST PROCESSING:

Very little processing was done to this photo at all. A slight sharpening was about all.

END RESULT:

The 2nd sync flash setting was helpful in getting the rider in focus but still show movement. At 1/25th shutter speed, the panning was plenty, combined with the speed of the rider, to create a blurred background. At the last moment before the exposure finished, the flash fired and captured most of the rider and bike nice and sharp. The panning motion wasn’t in perfect time with the rider and this created a cool, blurred effect around the sharp image the flash created. All these things combined resulted in a shot that shows the speed and action of the mountain biker but retained sharpness.

Thanks for coming.

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