I spent this morning in the shadows of the Oquirrh Mountains doing a stock photo shoot of a motocross rider. Shooting the action was a lot of fun, almost as much fun as riding James’ (the motocross rider) 1974 Kawasaki out to the location from where we parked.

I don’t shoot many action scenes, so today was a bit of a departure from my normal shooting. One thing I did come to realize (again) is that the Canon 5D Mark II is not the best camera for shooting in a high speed environment. The combination of its relatively slow 3.9 frame-per-second shooting combined with the rather outdated focus system made capturing the fast moving motorcycle somewhat challenging. Even photographing within these limitations though, I am pleased with the results I was able to obtain.

My setup was pretty straightforward. I paired a 70-200 f/4L with the 5D Mark II, and shot on aperture priority. The addition of the 580EX II flash on the camera helped to bring out some of the lost detail in the shadow areas.

Behind the Scenes - Motocross

I covered many of the logos on the motorcycle and rider with gaffer’s tape, but I’ve still got quite a bit of cloning to do to the images in addition to my usual edits before submitting them to my iStockphoto portfolio.

Big thanks to James for being a patient and gracious model and Nicole for helping behind-the-scenes.

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