Monday, March 4

Getting started with BMX Photography 2

By Josh Root
EXPN.com

Getting Started Part 1 | Getting Started Part 2

So in the first part of this 30-second lesson, I talked about things to do with a basic camera to improve your photos. In this part, I'll talk about what you can do if you are more seriously interested in photography.

First off, photography is expensive. So just get used to that in the beginning. If you are really serious about wanting to be a photographer (in any field, not just BMX) you need someone with deep pockets funding you, or you'll be working your ass off at crappy jobs to afford to do what you really love. Cameras break, lenses get dropped, gear gets stolen, flashes get crashed into, and there's always film and processing. But then again, not having money for beer and cigarettes kept me from picking up nasty addictions.

All the gear you need in two words, "Visa Platinum."

Equipment

An all-manual camera is a great place to start for any photographer. It makes you learn a lot about metering and focusing. The best gear to have for BMX/skate photography are the high end Nikon or Canon AF bodies. The Nikon F5 and the Canon EOS-1v are at the top of the pile at the moment. These cameras have great metering systems and fast autofocus, but since you will be metering manually and pre-setting your focus most of the time, that isn't all that important. The real reason to have a $2000 camera body is that they can shoot up to 8-10 frames per second, which lets you shoot those tailwhip backflip sequences. Now, this having been said, Chris Hallman, one of my favorite BMX photographers and the staff photographer at Woodward used an older all-manual Nikon until just recently. And his photos have been in every magazine you can think of.

Lenses are a good place to spend some money. There is no specific one lens that is best for shooting BMX. They all look pretty cool in different circumstances. I myself use a 16mm fisheye, 17-35 zoom and an 80-200 zoom most often. But everyone is different. My only specific advice is to stay away from lenses that go from very wide to very tele, like a 28-300. These lenses try to be everything at once, and end up not really doing anything well. On the plus side they are small and cheap, but in my opinion they aren't worth having for your main lens.

Flashes are great. Buy a couple of them. I would suggest finding ones that you can set the power on manually. Vivitar 283's are excellent flashes that you can find used all over the place. Also, you want to be able to get your flashes away from where you are shooting. The cheapest way to do this is with an optical flash slave. This is a little device that hooks up to your flash and tells it to fire when it sees your on-camera flash firing. The better and more expensive way to do it is to have radio slaves. These are little boxes that hook up to your camera and your flashes and fire via radio signals. This means you can be a couple hundred feet away with your camera from where your flashes are.

You'll need lots and lots of film. If you want to save a little money, shoot black and white and develop it in your bathroom. If you think you want to submit color images to magazines, you need to shoot slide film. Black and white films that I like are: Ilford Delta 100 & 400 and Kodak T-max 100, 400, & 3200. Slide films I like are Fuji Provia 100f and Kodak e100sw. But this is really a personal choice and there is a ton of information on the internet and other places about what different films look like.

The best advice anyone can give you about photography is to just do it as much as possible. Look through magazines for photos you like and try to copy them. Shoot photos of your friends every chance you get. If you can make a great photo of your best riding buddy's doing a 2-foot table. You're going to be able to shoot a great photo of DMC doing an 8-foot one. Start sending in your photos to magazines, they may get turned down over and over but if you keep trying you'll get noticed for your persistence. When you finally get the great shot, the editor will know who you are and stick you in the magazine. You'll make mistakes and screw up over and over again. After years behind the lens, I still make mistakes more often than I care to admit. But you will improve and the photos you see in your mind will start to show up on film. And then you can have my job and I can go back to bed. Photography is just like riding; if you want to get better you have to keep pushing yourself.

Related Photos:
Getting Started wtih BMX Photography