Catching Up

I've been thinking about this blog for a while and trying to work out what direction I should go with it. It tends to be more about photography, and I'm fine with that and imagine I will continue in that vein, but about photography in what way?

I started a whole article on Sports Photography and how to shoot it, you know another how to article, because I did find it difficult when I first started. Not that I was new to the camera or taking photos but that particular type of photography. It really is different to what I'm used to doing.

So maybe this blog should be about my adventures as a sports photographer and the ups and the downs. How I'm experimenting and what I'm trying that is new. What I love photographing and maybe what I find a boring. Maybe not so much of the last part.

Last Sunday I went to Castlemaine, the Victorian Junior and Master Criterium Championships were on. For those that don't know, my car was written off by AAMI last week for hail damage and I really didn't think I was going to make it to the crits, but a very dear friend of mine, Sandra, lent me her car and I was able to go.

I haven't photographed many crits, I did the Jayco Bay crits in January, and once Sunday photographed some of the races at St Kilda. I really enjoy photographing crits, and so far think it is by far my favourite type of racing to take shots of. You can usually walk around the circuit and take photos at lots of different angles. On the inside of the corner, the outsite, sitting right on the corner, coming into the straight etc. There is so much more variety.

Also, as the races are longer, can be anything up to an hour, there is the opportunity to try different things and if it doesn't work, you can still get lots of shots of the racing. One of my favourite things right now is to turn down the shutter speed and do some panning, especially of them going around a corner. I like to have lots of blur, but the face still in focus. I believe that you should always be able to see the face, and see the expression, or the concentration, whatever, but the face always has to be in focus, otherwise, for me, it is a delete, enter shot.

I love this photo. It would have to be the stand out photo of the day for me. The only thing that maybe would have made it better would have been if I hadn't cut the bottom of the wheels off. I love the speed that the image shows. You can tell he was moving fast. I like that the background is completely blurred. I really like the way most of his body is also moving, or the appearance of it because it is out of focus, but his face is in focus. I just think it is a fantastic shot and one I'm really proud of.

Many years ago I belonged to a camera club, just my local one. I could never get the perfect shot. I ended up quitting because I found the restrictions to be to confining and sometimes an image was good, because it broke the rules, not always, but sometimes. I hated that everything had to be, to the rules. I find myself unable to follow many of the rules in sports photography, but it is too hard to apply them, you just have to shoot, with some knowledge of what you are doing and hope it works. I do find there are certain things I try to get and for the most part I do get them.

This image certainly doesn't follow any rules and was taken the wrong way. I should have had the camera in landscape, but was getting ready to photograph individual riders as they got close to me. Then again it is nice to see the riders standing up, and you can see how tough they would finding the climb, but you also get a sense of where they are riding. The bit of road in the foreground shows how steep it is, the background tells we were in a rural town.

So perhaps a photo doesn't have to be perfect to tell a story. Though right now I will had taken the time to photograph a building that saw in Castlemaine, will have to do that next time I'm there.