Learnings from the Run

My first post on this page was about the Knowledge Channel KaRUNungan 2010. Aside from the pre-photo planning, I was reviewing my shots this week and I have noticed a lot of things that sparked areas of improvement on my photography.

(1) When shooting running people using panning technique look at first how the runners run. There are runners that bounce while running, when you pan your shots, you get distorted faces. Even with a flash! The only way to beat this is probably proper timing and shoot runners that are not bouncing! Or it could be because of the fact that I was nearly shooting the subject straight on. Or I was shooting too slow (1/30 sec.) But that is something I need to try out next time as to which is which is the culprit. Atleast I have a list of things to look into if I'll be shooting moving people.

"The Ring" Effect?!
f/5.6, 1/30 sec., ISO 400,
flash (canon 580ex II) on E-TTL 2nd curtain sync

(2) Hotshoe Flash. Use second curtain. Bring extra batteries especially if you have night shots, why? At night you'll most likely be asking your flash to shoot at full power. I was lucky enough that there was ambient light creeping in already that afforded me to discard the flash, but if the race started as planned? I would have missed alot of shots!

(3) Bring food or EAT before the event starts. We went to the venue at 2AM, briefing 2:30AM, the run started 5:30AM. I had a subway sandwich in the backpack, I thought, "Hey, I can eat while shooting." Alas, I was carrying a backpack, and a tripod on my back, My hand on camera which is also heavy (Canon EOS 7D with a 580EXII). Goodbye sandwich. An energy bar would have been great!

(4) Shoot Light. I mentioned in (3) what I was carrying. Inside my backpack are two extra shirts, card reader, some papers (race briefing), a notebook, a pen, a 50mm f/1.8, camera and lens covers. I should have left these stuff on the car. It hindered a bit of my movement, I was having a hard time jumping thru the concrete barrier to cross from one side of the road to another. I guess all the gear you own have to be planned for the right shooting purposes. I would have gone on the shooting day with a waist pack, housing a water bottle, a garbage bag (in case it rains pretty hard), an energy bar, CF cards, tripod and cam.

So far those are things that I think would have been essential on that day. I'm hoping that the next time that I'll be shooting a run/marathon I won't commit the same mistakes again.