Olympics in Milan: Having fun at Long Track Speed Skating

In between all the hockey games, and time permitting, I like to get to other venues to capture other Olympic sports. The other day, I got up and traveled back to Rho to visit the Long Track Speed Skating venue. I thought it would be fun to capture some images from this sport and try to be a little more artistic.

This photo is a pretty standard image of long track skating, capturing the action at more than 1/2000 sec. Since I had not photographed this sport in 8 years, I had to warm up and figure out the best settings and shooting locations. Most photographers were using long lenses on monopods, but I chose to stick with the Canon R1 with just the RF 70-200mm lens, and I shot everything handheld.

This photo is also taken at a very fast shutter speed, but zoomed in a bit more. This creates a little more blur in the Olympic rings in the background.

I moved around until I found a good spot, and took most of my shots along the turn, to get the Olympic rings and colors behind the skaters.

After taking a bunch of "safe shots" at a fast shutter speed, it was time to get creative. I started shooting all my images at between 1/25th and 1/40th of a second and panning my lens at the exact same speed as the skater. It is very difficult to get a good shot when doing this, but the end results are really cool. The goal is to get a lot of motion in the background, while getting a sharp image of the athlete.

I found that the best images were taken of the skater in the inside lane. It was a little farther from me and the padded border, and also cleaner foreground and background. I also realized that I needed to concentrate on just one skater and not be distracted by the second competitor. If I tried to capture one after the other, neither skater came out well.

Whenever I see an American athlete in front of me, I try extra hard to get a good image. I was very happy to capture this shot at 1/40th of a second.

I should mention that it is a lot of fun for me to get creative like this, but easier to do when I am not contractually obligated to get an image for the team. I can push the boundaries and experiment a little more.

I hope you enjoyed viewing these photos as much as I did capturing them.

Please excuse any typos. Normally I try to proof read everything before I post, but here at the Olympics, time is a commodity. I definitely miss some things. :)

__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Africa, Iceland and more.

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
_________________________________________________________________