George Hincapie, 2009 Tour of California. Sacramento, California. February 14, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

George Hincapie of Team Columbia comes through the first turn of the prologue time trial stage at the 2009 Amgen Tour of California in Sacramento, California.

For anyone wondering how to photograph individual riders at a bicycle race, the time trial stages can provide your best opportunities. In contrast to the road stages where the whole pack may fly past you – once! – at 30 mph, in a time trial the riders come by one at a time.

The key, I think, is to pick a spot where the riders are likely to be in interesting situations and positions, such as at this tight u-turn at the end of the first straightaway. Here the riders had to slow down considerably in order to get through the turn, they were headed directly towards me as they came by, the bike angles in the turn can be dramatic, and the riders are often looking on up the road as they come through the turn.

Also, think about the lighting. Although it is cloudy in this shot, I also picked this location because I knew that the rider’s faces would be illuminated by sunlight. If the riders are backlit you’ll get very little facial detail unless you use fill flash. Also, if possible, take a look at what is in the background of the prospective shot. At one point yesterday I failed to pay enough attention and ended up with a series featuring out of focus blue outhouses in the background! :-)

One key is to get the rider in the right location within the frame. Once I figure out the right focal length for the distance to the turn from my position, I try to concentrate on the rider’s head, keeping it in the upper right corner of the frame (using this shot as an example). Otherwise it is all too easy to center the riders face in the frame and lose the bike and end up with a lot of nothing in the upper portion of the shot.

Focus can be tricky, and I think you have to figure out the best approach depending upon how well your camera/ lens can autofocus, what focal length you use, and whether you are going to try for one shot of each rider to use burst mode and capture several. In this case I used the AI Servo autofocus setting and I did have burst mode enabled, though in perhaps half the cases I only held the shutter release down long enough to capture a single frame. Although I used a fairly automated approach for focus, I set exposure manually. In a different situation I might even switch AF off entirely also, instead manually focusing on a specific point in the turn and then timing shots for when the riders arrive there.

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.

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