AMA bikes and bloopers!!

F45

I'd like to show you some recent AMA images taken at Laguna a couple weeks ago. So, in an effort to avoid boring you with the same old tight singles, here are a few of the more interesting highlights of the weekend. Hope you enjoy:

Mid Ohio this weekend...stay tuned!

PhotoHound

Header
Face plant - Ouch! :hurt

Cool sequence, the flipping/flying bike is awesome. The other shots are excellent too, well done.

:ian

DRGSin

Man, great timing! Too bad they were cut off otherwise theyd be killer shots!

ian408

Ouch....

Tee Why

Nice stuff, good catch on the face plant. I can feel his pain.

jbswear

As a hardcore rider, I flinch when I see things like that (I've been hit by cars twice), but I still love looking!

Great shots, especially the group and pair shots.

Now I need to find somebody local that actually knows how to use a 'real' camera and shoot me on my bike...

TristanP

Love the crokscrew shot.

jbswear wrote:

Now I need to find somebody local that actually knows how to use a 'real' camera and shoot me on my bike...

jbswear - got on your bike and head to Summit Point for a trackday. You'll get your pic taken and have some fun at the same time.

F45

Much Thanx to all for your comments and kind words!
There have been some great posts/images around here since I last checked in and I'll look forward to going through some more tonight.


This past 10 days or so have included flight delays, flight cancellations, baggage not arriving when I did and enough daily routine work to keep two people busy:tough


BUT... back on track again now and I'll post a website update and a few selects from Mid Ohio on Thursday (for those of you interested in that sort of thing!)

m_granite

Good job on the motorbike. I really like the last one. Great 2 rider shot!

rwells

Chris, great shots...

If you don't mind me asking:

What focus point are you using?

I shoot rodeo's and find that I need to use the center focus, of course bouncing bulls are never in a predictable spot, so you can't prefocus. It would be nice to not always have the subject in the middle of the frame.

I wouldn't think that you cropped part of the bikes off, so that leads me to believe that you were using one of the off-center focus points.

I've tried that on my 30D & MkII with very unpredictable results.

Any info appreciated.

maczippy

rwells wrote:

Chris, great shots...

If you don't mind me asking:

What focus point are you using?

I shoot rodeo's and find that I need to use the center focus, of course bouncing bulls are never in a predictable spot, so you can't prefocus. It would be nice to not always have the subject in the middle of the frame.

I wouldn't think that you cropped part of the bikes off, so that leads me to believe that you were using one of the off-center focus points.

I've tried that on my 30D & MkII with very unpredictable results.

Any info appreciated.

I also shoot horses...feel free to check out http://www.whimwham.com

Ask away.

You know I thought I wrote more than this....! You get to 45 and the mind goes....

Chris, it's a shame you couldn't get the whole shebang, but crash shots are one of those right place at the right time deals. I was below you, and was swapping cameras when it happened so I was in the right place but faffing around with something else.

As for off centre focus points, I used to do this with my equine work all the time and it shouldn't be anything else. Yes, with m/c racing pretty much they follow the same trajectory, but with rodeo it's each way and everyway - I know. The trick might be to use a 70-200 and keep some space in the frame to allow a left or right "area" to focus on.

Andrew

F45

Hi Randy and Andrew,

This is a perfect example of what I tried to explain to others a while ago...
I don't crop anything from my images so what you see is every pixel available in every shot. I use different focussing points for different compositions (combined with aperture settings to make some of them work) and occasionally I'll pre-focus but not often.

I have an image composed in my head first, then I position myself to physically capture it within the camera's view finder and then I work on the best focusing point to achieve the shot that I want.

I'm telling you all this to emphasise the point that often I won't get them the way I want (as in these crash images) and consequently I'll just delete them during post processing even if they are excellent in every other way...however in a case such as this crash sequence I kept them all because they show an interesting angle of what happened and crashes are not something you can prepare for anyway.

The best crash shots are from lenses that were already focussed on the rider when he/she starts to loose control! I was composing an angle with this rider and the guy beside him when he started wobbling so I had to react accordingly and could only manage to catch basically what you see here. There are several more shots from this sequence on my website but I selected the better ones for this thread.

The center focus point will always "bullseye" your image in the center of the frame which looks boring and almost always forces you to crop from somewhere. There are reasons to use it but I work pretty hard at trying not to!!


Andrew makes a good point regarding his equine photography and off center focus points and I understand how tricky it can be photographing rodeos but if you're willing to discipline yourself (and not settle for an image just because it's in focus) you'll soon find that emphasis on composition will be much more rewarding in the end.

Also please note that I don't think cropping should be against the law or anything...I just prefer to avoid it altogether because it's too much fun and becomes very addictive


Here is a great example of a crash that happened while I was focussed on the rider...

Morbid Andrew

yeah, I watched the AMA crash on television. It looked pretty rough at full speed. Great shots though.