Photographer’s Perspective: Anaheim 2

By: kardy1

Posted: 01/22/09

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A little background on what this editorial is all about – it’s my attempt to shed some light on making a living taking snapshots of the best Supercross racers in the world. We know there’s a ton of striving photohounds out there (some more accomplished than others), so we’ve decided to scratch your itch a bit by offering some insight on how to capture the action that is moto. Hence, if you don’t have a good understanding of basic photography (at least), then you may want to stop reading right now!

Shooting photos on the floor of a Monster Energy AMA Supercross is by most accounts the pinnacle of the craft (that ‘craft’ being moto-photohounding). The only thing that is superior is doing day-jobs for catalog, ads, brochures and the like. I’ll give a bit of insight into the rounds I cover for Motocross.com and how each location is a little different than the others, and what can be done to overcome the issues and still produce nice photos.

First though, let’s talk about gear: Ya gotta have the best to compete with the best. There is always debate as to what is best, and typically that’s a Nikon vs. Canon argument. I chose Canon several years ago for various reasons, none of which matter now. It’s a ‘six of one, half dozen of the other’ argument at this point, although many photogs will probably disagree with me on that. The body I use is an EOS 1Ds Mark II. Yes, there’s a 1Ds Mark III out now and I gave one a solid workout at Anaheim 1. It didn’t strike me as significantly better, especially considering that a nice used body goes for around $5,000. I won’t go back to a 1D Mark II or III since I will not offer clients any less resolution than I’ve been providing for the last couple of seasons (16.7 megapixels), so I’ll stick with what I’ve got. Everyone is quite happy with the files I’ve been delivering, and never once have I heard “boy Jeff, if I could just have a few more megapixels I’d really be happy!”. Not once. High ISO performance is minimally better, colors are the same, although functionality is quite a bit improved. However, I will hold out for the next iteration of the 1Ds series before taking the dive. I’m already saving my pennies… but it may end up going to something called RED instead (http://www.red.com).

Shooting at Anaheim 2 was exceptionally good. The track offered a lot of unique angle potentials with a couple of sections that we could actually shoot the whoops head-on, which is pretty much unheard of in recent memory. The lighting is often a limiting factor in Supercross, especially when using a long lens like the 300mm f/2.8. You can only throw flash so far, and when you do, it lights up all of the dust and other particulates in the air between you and the rider, so it’s usually preferable to shoot a longer lens with available light, i.e. that provided by the stadium’s lighting. Thankfully, Anaheim is quite well lit. I was getting away in most sections with ISO1000, shutter 1/640 or 1/500 at F/4 or a bit less. In some corners I’d go to 1250, 500, 3.2, but generally it was brighter than that. To stop the action, 1/500th is pretty much the minimum shutter, and typically when trying to ‘document an event’, you want to stop the action. When making art, you slow it down and pan with the rider, etc. I save the art manufacturing for practice sessions only, usually. When we go back to the stadiums out east we’ll be forced to shoot at more around ISO1600 or 3200 at 1/400th and F/2.8. That’s much less desirable and severely limits the variety of types of shots you can deliver. Nikon guys will pump up their D3 bodies to higher ISO to get away with faster shutter and more depth of field, but they’ll pay for it with dirtier images, so it’s a trade-off for sure. Lots of flash and much of it off-camera will set apart the good shots from the average ones.

Another great thing about A2 was the amount of access to the track we had. The last few years, floor photographers were limited to the outer-most reaches of the track area and little or no access to the infield. This season, however, we’ve gotten GREAT access to the inside, and that results in a lot more potential to create good images. Trust me when I say – we’re loving it.

I’ll update again from Houston, which if I remember correctly, is pretty dimly lit. If you have any basic questions please PM me here on the site or throw up a comment down below, I’ll try to answer them for you.