The need for speed

This reader has raced to a shot full of dynamism and colour

Our reader Adrian Stillwell

This was taken on the Practice Day for the UK BSB Championships. It was shot at Murray’s Corner at Snetterton. The bikes have to slow down quite a lot here (although they’re still doing 60-80mph), enabling you to frame a shot. The difficulty shooting at this corner is trying to omit people and the grandstand in the background.

I was hoping to get the dynamism of the bike as the rider leans over to take the corner. I used single-point AF to stop the camera hunting the moving bikes.

Our expert Andrew James

This is an excellent action image, Adrian. You’ve frozen the moment with a fast shutter speed (1/800 sec), and the lean from the biker helps to achieve that dynamic composition you wanted.

It looks like your focus point was on the very front of the bike: shooting at f/6.3 with such an extreme focal length of 500mm (plus the extra crop factor of your Canon 7D) means that sharpness drops off fairly quickly. You could easily have selected f/8 to give a little more depth of field, and still had more than enough shutter speed to stop everything in its tracks.

It’s a tight crop on the rider, but that’s clearly a deliberate choice, and you’ve left more space below and to the right of the bike so that everything looks perfectly balanced.