November 2011: Beach Motocross
Weymouth Beach Motocross - a national motocross event - attracts over 250 riders from all over England. The beach course is a mile long and is designed to test the riders with jumps, chicanes and a high speed straight along the line of the tide.
This year it was almost like a summer's day. The beauty of such an event is that it is an opportunity to take alot of photographs, and to experiment a little. There were things to consider including the angle of the sun and finding a suitable vantage point. I tried my 55-250mm lens set at a large aperture (around f5-f6) to get a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action (around 1/1000th second), taking the images straight off camera (jpegs).
Some of my favourites are below:
The bikes racing along the high speed straight:
For the main action I managed to position myself at the end of a straight after a jump, so the bikers would come towards me. What I didn't realise was the sheer amount of sand that would be thrown up to add to the photos:
I particularly like this photo as the bike to the right (number 44) is coming out of the sand and the left hand side of the photo shows sand flying about:
I think this photo really conveys the movement, dirt and noise of the race:
There was also plenty of time to pick out some of the fallers:
A great event to watch and good for practising action and movement photography. It's on every year.
View the latest photgraphs added to the website in this gallery:
http://kjw.photium.com/portfolio182180.html
This year it was almost like a summer's day. The beauty of such an event is that it is an opportunity to take alot of photographs, and to experiment a little. There were things to consider including the angle of the sun and finding a suitable vantage point. I tried my 55-250mm lens set at a large aperture (around f5-f6) to get a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action (around 1/1000th second), taking the images straight off camera (jpegs).
Some of my favourites are below:
The bikes racing along the high speed straight:
For the main action I managed to position myself at the end of a straight after a jump, so the bikers would come towards me. What I didn't realise was the sheer amount of sand that would be thrown up to add to the photos:
I particularly like this photo as the bike to the right (number 44) is coming out of the sand and the left hand side of the photo shows sand flying about:
I think this photo really conveys the movement, dirt and noise of the race:
There was also plenty of time to pick out some of the fallers:
A great event to watch and good for practising action and movement photography. It's on every year.
View the latest photgraphs added to the website in this gallery:
http://kjw.photium.com/portfolio182180.html