Photographs: Sports

Motorpacing the Women’s Keirin – American Velodrome Challenge

2 Comments
Motorpacing the Women's Keirin - American Velodrome Challenge

Motorpacing the Women’s Keirin – American Velodrome Challenge. Hellyer Park Velodrome, San Jose, California. June 26, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The group drafts a motorcycle in the early laps of a women’s keirin event at the American Velodrome Challenge, Hellyer Park Velodrome, San Jose, California.

Just so people don’t start to think that I can only make blurry photographs of bicycle racing, here is a more straight-ahead bike racing shot from a preliminary round in the women’s keirin race at the American Velodrome Challenge. (I think this photo also demonstrates that the light does matter in sports photography, too – this was just just as the sun was about to drop below the horizon, so the light is golden and warm.) Here the group is being "motor-paces" by the fellow on the motorcycle for the first few laps as the riders remain in his draft and he gradually brings them up to speed. After a few paced laps the motorcycle pulls off and there is a very short, intense, and high speed finish.

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

keywords: bike, bicycle, racing, track, velodrome, national, professional, san jose, california, usa, rider, racer, competitor, women, hellyer, park, santa clara, county, keirin, motor, pace, motorcycle, draft, american, challenge, helmet, sunglasses, handlebars, wheel, proman, century, uscf, shadow, afternoon, evening, stock

2 thoughts on “Motorpacing the Women’s Keirin – American Velodrome Challenge”

  1. Hi Doug:

    Sorry it took a bit longer than usual to reply to your message, but it’s been a bit of a crazy week!

    I virtually always shoot RAW – though action sports like cycling do produce the sorts of situations in which I might (very rarely) switch to jpg in order to be able to shoot more frames in burst mode before filling the buffer. But here I did shoot in RAW.

    I put the camera in burst mode, though I don’t necessarily “burst” every shot. With some careful control I have a choice this way between grabbing a single frame or, if necessary, holding the shutter button down longer and letting the camera fire a series of frames. I don’t have my RAW files on the computer from which I’m writing this, but my recollection is that this shot was from a burst series since I was very close to the rides and they move fast!

    You may have noticed that I took two quite different approaches to shooting the track racing at the American Velodrome Challenge. Some shots (like the one on the page) are quite sharp while others made use of intentional motion blur. To get the sharp images I employ several techniques, which include:

    • Increasing the ISO so that I can use shorter exposures – I probably shot these at ISO 400 or 800.
    • Using a somewhat larger aperture than usual – the trick is to balance between a bit of background blur and getting such a narrow DOF that focus on the moving targets becomes almost impossible.
    • Panning the camera with riders as they move past. This is a bit trickier than it might first seem…
    • Thinking as I shoot about composition. Yes, as I’m watching a moving pack or riders go by a few feet away at 30+mph I am thinking about composition. I have a few tricks that might be useful. First, shoot at the riders bodies rather than their heads – if you center heads (in some shots) you miss their bodies and get empty space in the top half of the frame. Pick a central rider and think about where in the frame you want to put him/her. In some cases I use the furthest right/left AF point and place that on the rider as the pack approaches, thus putting the focused point of interest somewhere other than the middle.

    As for post-processing, it was fairly minimal on this shot. This particular race was run during “golden hour”, hence the very warm color is natural. I dodged some of the darker shadow areas just a bit and I cropped the original frame a little bit, but not radically. I do a bit of work with curves sometimes, but that was minimal here.

    Now, the “blurry” shots that I’ve also posted this week are a bit of another story. Most were shot w/o flash at ISO 1600 or 3200 and ended up a bit underexposed. I did considerable work in post on those to bring the levels back up, mostly by means of curves adjustments, some of which were constrained by masks. I also had to make significant adjustments to color balance since they were shot entirely under to bizarre color of the track’s lighting system – the originals look rather sickly green.

    Hope that helps. If you remind me I might write a post or two later this summer where I take a photo or two and “expose” the whole post-processing workflow that I used.

    Dan

    Reply

  2. Hi Dan

    Really like the colors and clarity of these bike photos. Nice!
    I assume you shot raw. Would be interested in your post processing in bringing these shots out.
    I normally would not ask, but know you have shared your work in the past.

    Also, to late in the year for Panther beach? Was by that way last weekend and stopped to check it out. Fogged in, but
    nice spot. First time there. The nice evenings earlier in the week had me thinking…

    Reply

Join the discussion — leave a comment or question. (Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately.)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.