High Point AMA Motocross Pro National

I spent my fathers day shooting the AMA Pro Motocross round at High Point Raceway in Mt Morris, PA.  The action is intense!  I am planning to cover the remaining east coast rounds of the AMA pro series throughout the summer.  This week I had to shoot from the general spectator areas as I didn't apply for media credentials before the deadline, but I hope to be shooting from the track infield at the upcoming events.  My excitement is super high to be working with a major industry website supplying their photographs and reporting on the event.

Blurry Trees and Fast Riders

June 1st was the Lewis Morris Challenge, a mountain bike race sponsored by Marty's Reliable Cycle.  I spent the day hanging out in the woods working on my panning technique and experimenting with off camera flash to combine a blurred background with a frozen subject.  My new D3 performed exceptionally:  out of nearly 800 shots I only threw away a handful due to out of focus on the face of the rider. Im still amazed at this new tool's abilities.

Check out my client proof galleries in the Sports heading for the rest of the images from the MLC race.

Peace of mind

Im super excited with a recent equipment upgrade from Nikon D200 DSLR cameras to a Nikon D3.  The D3 is Nikon's $5000 top of the line professional DSLR specifically targeted to photojournalists (wedding photography tends to fall in line with equipment requirements).

Compared to the D200, this camera has HUGE advantages:

• The D3 can produce very clean images without grain or noise in darker situations (every ceremony and reception hall)
  
• The focusing system is spot on and tracks movement better such as a bride coming down the isle. 
  
• It shoots 11 shots per second compared to 5, great for the bouquet and garter toss!  
• Slightly higher resolution 12mp vs 10mp and 14bit raw files that come out of photoshop cleaner with better color and tone.  (the pictures are wonderful so far) 
  

But most important to you: It has dual memory card slots, so now I have a backup in camera to guard against a corrupt memory card losing your precious image files.  With lesser cameras, if the memory card became corrupt there was a good chance all the images on that card could be lost.  Cameras with only one card slot put all your eggs in one basket so to speak.  This was a major reason I was willing to invest $5000 into a single piece of equipment:  Peace of mind from two baskets;-)

Now I just need to books a few more weddings to pay for a second one! I like having 2 cameras with different lenses mounted ready to go, but just couldn't afford to drop 10 grand at once.


My younger son Joshua showing the focusing system at work, it is able to track forward and backward fast movement very well.

The D3 with it's larger sensor also gives less depth of field. In laymen's terms, I can get a blurrier background when I need to knock out distracting elements and make the subject "pop" more.

Michele & Tom - May 4th 2008

MX

I was able to get out of the house for a day this last weekend for a day of motocross riding as well as some shooting.  This is my long time hobby, I will likely never give it up even though it's a bit dangerous.

(That's me on the yellow bike in the last picture taken by my friend Joe)

More from the kitchen

Flash fire in the kitchen