How to...

Taking photos with Seb Rogers

When I first came into the Bikefax world I already had a pretty good grounding in landscape photography and taking pictures of static subjects, but I have to confess that I struggled when I moved into the world of fast moving objects and subjects who just couldnt stand still.

So after a year of blurry photos in the books I decided to seek some help and enlisted onto the mountain bike photography course being organised by Cycle Active and run by the legendary mtb photographer, Seb Rogers. Sebs photos have adorned just about every mtb mag and calendar in recent years and his attention to detail and quirky angles have sealed his reputation as one of he premier mtb photographers in the UK.

The first thing Seb had us doing was panning, no, not for gold, but in order to keep the rider nice and sharp in the shot. In fact, the constant theme of the weekend was, moving subject means moving camera. To pan well, Seb explained, is an art in itself and to make it good means plenty of practice. To pan well, decide where you want your subject to be when you take the shot, stand squarely with your hips towards the shot, then twist round and follow your rider into the shot and when they reach your chosen shot, take the pic. Do this well and your rider will stay sharp, with just a hint of blur and movement in the wheels and a pleasing blurring of the background. Depending on your shutter speed you can get a nice 3D effect and a real sensation of speed.

Building on this, Seb then had us pre-focusing on the spot where we wanted the rider to be. Autofocus, he told us is a load of old rubbish. Prefocusing the camera on a spot and freezing it by flipping to manual, meant that you got your rider every time and didnt have the problem of the camera Autofocus not being able to keep up with a fast rider.

By the end of the first day, peoples photography skills were really moving on, and in the evenings reviewing session and slide show, some people in the group had some very juicy shots.

The next day, Seb had us all switch our cameras to full manual mode, something many of us had never done, believing far too much in the infallibility of technology. Only in full manual mode, we learned, could we really take control of the shot. Once in manual, we looked at setting the exposure and time according to our decisions about the type of shot we wanted. Panning worked well at about 1/125 of a sec and a higher shutter speed of around 1/350 sec for front on ¾ shots.

Once we had a good handle on choosing the correct exposure, we were then exposed to the histogram. Again this was something that was new to a lot of people on the course. Put your camera in display mode and press info. What youll get is a little graph showing the distribution of tones in the image. For an even distribution and a well exposed shot, what you want is for the graph to have an even spread with some bunching around the centre. A graph going off to the left means too many dark tones in the shot and the image will likely be underexposed and conversely when the graph goes over to the right, there are too many highlights and the photo will most likely be overexposed.

A rule of thumb in digital photography is to expose to the right meaning that you keep the histogram a little over to the right which gives you enough leeway to recover the photo in Photoshop if necessary. Depending on how your histogram looks. You can make adjustments by going up or down a few stops to get exactly the exposure you want. This really helpful little tool can make all the difference to getting a really well balanced shot. How often have you let the camera make that decision for you only to get the perfect shot ruined by a poor auto exposure? Once you get to grips with interpreting the histogram your photography will really start to move on.

The final part of the equation in the course was composition and creativity. Seb talked about the well known rule of thirds and another little rule of using,  far, middle and near where having varying interest in these three planes in the photograph tells a story and leads the eye into the main interest.

He also talked about leading lines, such as paths and walls and luckily for us in mountain biking, the ever present and perfect leading line of the trail itself. In the photograph these are used to create a pleasing composition and to lead us to the main point of interest. Diagonal leading lines always work well, and to get this effect from the trail, simply step off the side of it and instead of getting the rider coming straight at you, youll have a nice angled shot.

And then the final piece of advice from Seb, once wed learnt all the rules, he said, break them, some of the best shots have no rules whatsoever, and he went on to show us a selection of his own classy shots where this was exactly the case. For instance shots where the rider is up against the side of the frame or in a corner can work well, or have the rider disappearing out of the shot for a dynamic image. Also experiment with getting the shot from different angles by going above or below the rider, apparently Seb is well known for climbing into trees to get those great shots.

Got to say it was an excellent and very well run course and everyone learnt loads whatever their previous photography experience. In fact quite a few of the photographs being produced by some of the people on the course were so good, I expect to see them in a magazine one day.

More than anything, I was impressed by Sebs straight talking teaching and his high standards and attention to detail. Never once did he allow us to compromise on getting anything but the best shot possible. As well as this Cycle Active had everything perfectly organised and the sun shone and shone and shone all weekend.

Photos and article: Sue Savege 

For courses in mountain bike photography check out:

www.sebrogers.co.uk

www.cycleactive.co.uk