We went to Kalamazoo for Canadian Thanksgiving (as usual), and Ray, Jenna’s dad, had press passes to a motocross event as a part of a class in sports photography he is taking. So I got to go see and take pictures of something I would otherwise never have seen. This is the second of two posts.

This is the first time I’ve actually the first time I’ve successfully panned a subject, which means moving the camera with the subject in order to create a blurred background (with motion streaks), which captures the effect of movement. These motorcyclists are definitively not standing still, as a high shutter speed might make you think. The shutter speed here was 1/160th of a second. Lower shutter speeds are possible but it’s harder to make the subject sharp.

We went to Kalamazoo for Canadian Thanksgiving (as usual), and Ray, Jenna’s dad, had press passes to a motocross event as a part of a class in sports photography he is taking. So I got to go see and take pictures of something I would otherwise never have seen.

I’m not normally a fan of motor sports — I have too many other things to do and be concerned about. And it’s not the most sustainable sport out there, to put it mildly, but there’s nothing I can do about that. Plus, seeing people do crazy stunts on motorcycles is undeniably cool… The acrobatics and level of physical control human beings are capable of never ceases to amaze me. And it makes great pictures and great fun taking them.

I don’t really have the equipment for this kind of photography, though. Sports photography is typically very fast-paced, and my zoom lens is anything but fast. It’s a bargain basement Nikon 300mm f/4-5.6. Under bright conditions (like the day I took this picture) it keeps up — barely. But a faster lens — say a fixed f/2.8 — is sure to give you sharper pictures even under conditions where my f/4-5.6 can cope. That said, I’m very happy with the results of my 300mm, which far exceeded expectations. Maybe it’s not all in the equipment. My biggest gripe is probably the horribly slow auto-focus, driven by a motor in the camera body. But considering the $200 I paid for it, however, it’s doing very well.