how hard is it to photograph skateboarders?

pretty damn challenging. you have to anticipate where & when your subject will appear. you have to stay out of the way of the skaters. you must properly maintain your camera setting, your composition, and… watch out!

¿why is it so damn hard?

your subjects are FAST. they are traveling at like… 10 mph. so there is the danger, sure… but what really matters about this is the photo! it’s difficult to get a crisp, clean shot when your subject is traveling at a meteoric pace. it’s hard to get a still photo of a multi-step trick. sometimes the dope skate spots are illegal to skate, which means as a photographer, you could get caught up in that mess.

skate photography camera settings

fast shutter speed: essential. this is ideal if you want to freeze the action. if you want to create motion blur for stylistic reasons, have at it🤷‍♀️😜but otherwise, shutter should be @ 1/1000 or higher

since your shutter speed is so fast, you’ll need to make sure you keep your ISO at a minimum. 100-200 is as high as you should go, otherwise you’ll have a grainy image.

i like to keep my f-stop around 16, but some of the images i included are as varied as they can be. i like playing around with the aperture.

show the location off. is it in a skate park? show that . show the bowls & the rails & the “features”

try shooting from below the skaters
try standing above them
try standing on your head
wide angle lenses are cool
fish eye lenses are cool
GET IN THE BOWL
stand on top of your friends so you can get a cool unique perspective
try stuff
don’t be scared
show their FACE! try to get the whole body + the location and how high the trick is

composition & angles

~2 star shot. i don’t hate it, composition is wonky though

85mm lens
1/1000 shutter speed
f/8
100 ISO
manual focus

series of 3 pics of a half cab noseslide

85mm
1/2000
ISO 200
edited in photoshop to make this little graphic showing some of the parts of the trick

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