Shooting MTB photography comes with a number of challenges that are often hard to predict with one of the hardest being having to shoot in areas with very little light. It may be a bright sunny day out, but when you’re deep in the forest, it often becomes difficult to get those good patches of light for your camera to perform at its best. So I wanted to share a few tips on how I think to shoot in those darker areas to make sure I’m getting useable shots.
#1 Know the limits of your camera
A lot of modern cameras nowadays are ready to work in some tough conditions. The power of these new sensors can really be pushed to the limit and allow you to capture shots you’ve never thought possible. (I always think back to the Chris Burkard shots of the surfers in Iceland under the northern lights. Yes, they had big lights on shore to light them up, but still a crazy set up that they had and how it was captured with a Sony A7Sii!) When it comes to exposing for images of fast moving subjects, you’re going to have to compensate on some aspects of the exposure triangle when planning your shots. The first thing to go, is usually your aperture, or F-stop. Having fast lenses on top of a powerful sensor can really help out. And you won’t find many photographers shooting on anything less than 2.8 when it’s dark. Which when you think about aperture, it makes sense to shoot wide open and let the most of the light in. So when you’re in a dark setting the first step will be to open that aperture as far as it can go.
The other two aspects of the Exposure Triangle, Shutter and ISO, are going to be where things start to get a little bit trickier and will only get better with practice! ISO can be especially tricky because as your value gets higher, you start to benefit more light, but you also start to lose in other areas. As the ISO goes up, you start to introduce more grain into the image and you actually lose data in the image. The less date you have, the less flexibility you have to mess with the image in post. When you attempt to edit or view your image, you may not be able to change colors as easily, or boost values before seeing lots of noise and making the image look “muddy.”
Now with Shutter Speed, this is up to your interpretation and will most likely be one of the most difficult to say that there is an exact number for everything. The shutter can determine if things are frozen in time, or have a blur to them to show that the object is moving. These can often be combined in one image to demonstrate speed and action, but it ultimately comes down to how you want to show it. When shooting around 1/1000 of a second and above, the images will often come out to be pretty still in their nature. The action is frozen in time. But as you drop below that, for mountain bike photography specifically, you’ll start to notice that the rider or the bike may be frozen in time, but the wheels are blurred. This would be because the wheels rotate so much faster than the rider moving along the trail. There are always other factors to consider however, and that can be whether you’re shooting the rider straight on, or panning along with them. Depending on how you picture the shot is how you’ll want to adjust the settings to compensate.
The best thing to do is to experiment with it. Push your ISO way up so that you can see what different shutter speeds do to your style. Next time you’re out on a shoot and you get the shots you need, go ahead and mix up your settings, take them home and see how things work with your edits. Try presets you’ve used in the past, and take notes as to what worked and what didn’t for the next time you go to shoot in the wild.
#2 Expose for the subject
This one may be self explanatory, but it’s something that I always try to think of when I’m out capturing subjects. The primary metering that myself, and most photographers that I’ve talked with, use is the Evaluative Meter setting. Your camera is most likely set to this by default and there’s really no reason to change it, but it helps to know how to use it and expose properly. When you’re shooting in areas that are mostly shaded, those spots in the trees that break through to the outside light are going to create a great deal of contrast and can possibly threw off that meter. I’ll say it again, cameras these days are powerful and have a crazy amount of dynamic range. Just because they have dynamic range, doesn’t mean you should use it across your entire image. When you see that blue sky coming in through the trees, and you think it would be cool so show that, maybe think again about what the subject in your image will be.
Trying to expose for that blue sky may do a few things to the image that you might not want. 1. Ruin the actual metering on the subject itself and not actually show what the subject is, and 2. Completely distract from that subject itself. Adding in unnecessary parts to the image can take away from what you actually want the viewer to look at. Sometimes it’s best to only expose for that subject and let the rest get blown out.
#3 Have the image in your head before you go to shoot
This one is a bit less technical, but more for creative side of the brain. It also comes with shooting and practicing! So many factors come into composition for photographing riders and can be interpreted in so many ways. Things may not always come out the way you intend to, but having a plan going into each individual shot will help with deciding your composition. For example, say you know of a specific section of trail that you’ve been excited to shoot. You get there with a rider and think to yourself, “how am I gonna shoot this?” If you’re shooting something for a client, lay out the goal of why you’re taking this shot and where the image will be used. It it just to show how good the rider is at managing terrain and therefor you want to shoot a bit wider to show all of the aspects of the trail and the environment? Or is it to showcase one specific component on the bike and portray why someone would use it over others. In this case the trail itself might not matter and you just need to get tighter on that one component specifically. Another thing to consider might be how the imaged will be used. In commercial settings will there need to be some white space to add copy to the image? Or will is just be for social media and filling the frame will engage the viewer the most?
When you approach the image with a goal, it helps to compose it with a greater purpose and can help tell a better story than a spray and pray.
Creativity is like a muscle and gets stronger when practiced with consistently.
So to recap quickly, the biggest thing that I can stress would be to practice, practice, practice. Take inspiration from others and try to imagine how to learn from your pro’s and con’s from each image that you shoot! There is always more to learn in photography and it’s one of the best things about it.
Feel free to leave questions in the comments below or if you’d like to learn about something in particular, drop the topic and I’ll do a deep dive into! If you’d like to receive a free preset to use on those dark images in the woods, sign up for the email list and I’ll send one over as a thank you! Brady Nations Photo Newsletter Sign Ups
Cheers,
Brady