How do I shoot Mountainbike?

    Now, first of all, every and each of us has a different style of shooting this sport. One trick I learned is to have variation. There's no point in taking 200 shots in the same place with same framing for example.
    I will take you through some shots I took with a friend and explain how I realized each of them.

1/250th , F/4, ISO 800

1/250th of a second is the max flash sync shutter speed, so you can't go over that shutter speed when using a flash. So yes, I did use a flash. The big aperture was for subject isolation, while ISO 800 helped me balance the exposure. This was shot at 55mm on a tele lens.

1/250th , F/4.5, ISO 400

This one was shot at 18mm, so the flash was closer, allowing me to decrease the ISO down to 400. Also, my position was low, in order to get a more dramatic perspective.

1/100th , F/5.6, ISO 400

You can probably see the shutter speed ain't high, and that's for a reason. I wanted to create a panning effect, tracking the subject and bluring the background in a dynamic way. Also, I changed my perspective and moved up high, to get things more interesting.

1/160th , F/4.5, ISO 400

One thing to keep in mind is that in sports photography it's not all about the action shots, sometimes a nice stationary one works great. Here, I tried to introduce the flare deliberately in the picture, again to make things look apart. The flash sorted out the backlighting problem. Actually, all theese shots were taken with a flash...

1/200th , F/4.5, ISO 400

The perspective here, at 18mm, looks interesting in my opinion. Only when you look at the bottom of the frame you realize the backwheel is not sitting on the ground.

1/1000th , F/5.6, ISO 200

This is probably the only one without flash. Still, I put the wheel in the sun, in order to have a decent shutter speed, since the difference between shade and sun was so BIG in light increments. I used the 200mm end of my tele for this detail shot, and I love how the texture and colors came out.

1/250th , F/4, ISO 800

Again, a proof of diversity. This was shot at 55mm with a tele lens, st F/4 for background blur (BOKEH) and the shutter speed and flash froze the main subject.

One conclusion about action flash photography is that it does 2 things: One, freezes the subject and two, makes him stand out from the background.

Now, there is no general rule on how to shoot sports, like you HAVE to have a higj shutter speed, you HAVE to have a big aperture and so on... It all depends on the conditions and on how you want your final shot to look.

Hope this helped you a bit, and remember, this is how I shoot mountainbike, not how you should shoot it or stuff like that....

This weekend I'm out photographing a tennis competition, hoping that I'll win not just experience, but maybe a little prise :). Who knows?

Don't forget to check my portfolio at http://tudorsphotos.weebly.com/.