How to Get Great Bike Race Photos
If you want to get great bike race photos, just follow these simple photography tips. A local bike shop sponsored this race in Memorial of a biking enthusiast who tragically passed away from cancer. It was a terrific event and got a lot of local support. This is a sports photography tip in general, good for all kinds of action sports photography: Bike racing pictures demand a shutter shutter speed of around 1/800 second or faster. With these images of the bike race through the streets of this small town, I set my camera on shutter priority. I used a high ISO setting of 1600 on this photograph so that my camera would give me good depth of field as well. I wanted the close riders and farther riders all to be in sharp focus. Find a Good Vantage Point I like to find turns in the race course as locations to shoot from. This photograph was taken form the outside of the turn.It's a great spot for a bike race photo because the riders are traveling toward me and angled as they lean into the turn. It's also very important to look at the background. Try to find a spot where the back ground is uncluttered and not distracting. Asking permission (with a smile) to step in front of another spectator for just a second to get your shot is a good idea. You can also look bring along a sturdy fold-able stool to stand on top of. I've have done this at parades and sports contests many times. Shoot for variety Not only should you move to various locations during your shoot, but also try shooting while standing, while getting down real low or very high if possible. This photograph was taken from a third floor window that overlooks the main street, very close to the finish line. If it's a crowded event, you may have to get creative in your thinking to get a good spot. The lane markings and the direction of the riders are on a diagonal which is using one of the rules of photography composition covered elsewhere on this site. I liked the shadows in this photograph too. This is a case where the back lighting from the sun added to the picture. Have the right Equipment You can get decent photos with a point and shoot camera, but shooting bike race photos with a Digital SLR is the best way.DSLRs have interchangeable lens, giving you the opportunity to use a powerful telephoto or zoom lens to get close to the sports action without putting yourself or others in danger. All of the bike racing pictures in this article were taken with a Canon 70-200 mm f 2.8 zoom lens on a Canon 5d camera.
For a definition of shutter lag or any other photo terms you would like to know more about, you can go to Photography Definitions. On this photo on the left, I changed the ISO setting to 400 so that the shutter speed would be slower. I panned my camera, following the racer as he whizzed by, as I clicked the shutter button. This created background blur on purpose, but kept my subject sharp. I used a monopod in this picture of our cyclists from the side. I like to use a monopod for two reasons.
  Do Some Photo Editing After you come home from an exciting photo shoot, it's always fun deciding what kind of photo editing to do. In the bike racing photo at the top of this page, I got real lucky. At the start of the bike race, only one cyclist had his head raised as they started.I use Adobe Photoshop as my choice for photo editing software. I took away most of the color saturation in all of the cyclists except my guy with his head raised. I added some contrast and blurred the remaining riders a little to add emphasis to my heads up bike racer. In this photo on the right of these three bike racers, I used Photoshop to create motion blur. It is more of an advanced technique and requires a bit of learning but it's enjoyable with bike race photos as well as any other kind of action photography. For a more detailed article on how to use motion blur for getting a blurry background by using the right camera settings go to this article How to get a Blurry Background You may also be interested in this article on several different ways to blur the background in your photo: Blur the Background. This was the first set of bike race photos I've ever taken. I had a blast learning as I went. Please feel free to leave me your comments or contributions on some of these pages on my web site, so that we can all get digital photo tips from each other. Back from Bike Race Photos to How to Photograph...
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A good camera also will not have any shutter lag. Shutter lag makes it very tough to time your exposure at the exact instant you want to capture the action.