Skateboarding shot

[Gary Smith]

Any advice welcome on how to improve these shots.

I tried to get the best postion struggled withe the shutter speed snf aperature.

[JohnG]

Hi Gary.

The first thing that jumps out at me is the subject is completely overexposed - it looks like too much flash. Which is confusing - your exif shows no flash - but there's a shadow so there must be SOME lightsource. The end result is the same - subject overexposed but without knowing the nature of the lightsource it's tough to suggest what to do differently. In general shutter priority is the worst mode to use for stop-action sports photography. The reason being it's easy to underexpose. Now, you have the opposite affect here -you're way overexposed. So if you didn't use flash I would recommend using negative exposure compensation - or preferably just shooting in manual exposure - have you're subject simply stand under the light source where the jump will occur and determine the proper exposure to get his face looking good. If the light source is constant that exposure will be the same during the jump and you don't have to worry about background or reflection fooling the metering of the camera during the jump.

Second thing - sometimes background can add an interesting context but not in this case. Your subject is filling up way too little of the frame which is dominated by unintersting suburbia. So you need to be a bit closer.

Third - this is the tough one. Even well executed it would be tough to make this an interesting shot because the action itself is not interesting. It looks like he's a couple inches off the ground. But, it depends on your intent. If your intent is just to capture a snap of a friend/son then all you can do is capture what they're capable of doing. If your intent is a good sports shot of skateboarding that can be tough to get without good action. My advice there is the same as in other sports - when you know the action won't be that good, try to capture expressions. A good expression is as good or better than good action. But no expression and no real action can be a boring combination.

Hope this was somewhat helpful.

[Mark1616]

John (as usual) has made some great points. I've only tried shootingskateboarding once so I'm no expert but I would say if you are trying to exaggerate the height etc then get low (I mean head on the ground) andshoot as wide as you can. Hereis the result I was able to get with a 10mm lenswhich is quite a bit wider than you have to play with but it will give you an idea. I needed more shutter speed and in honesty I should have flashed this too, but we are all learning :-)

[Gary Smith]

I used a external flash (New Toy)I am a complete novice when it comes to Photography .Not quite sure how to set my flash up either(It has lots of settings?)

I thought shutter priority would stop the action (Which it does appear to have )But your right the whole light thing has gone wrong.

Hopefully the more shots i take and review the better i become .How would you have set yourcamera for this shot?

[Bynx]

Ive been playing with photoshop again. Your pic looked a good candidate for some different lighting. What do you think?