Ski Racing

Some more shots of my team training. Any criticism or advice is welcome.

These look pretty good - at least at this size. Are they sharp? There are two problems that I see. One is obvious - the exposures are dark. Your camera's light meter wants to average everything to gray. So if there's a lot of snow in the scene, it's going to make that scene dark. If you're using Program, aperture priority, or shutter priority, try shooting at +1 exposure compensation. If you're shooting in manual mode, overexpose by one stop. Shoot a test shot before the real shot and check your histogram to see if you're clipping the highlights. I find that with ski photos, some post-processing usually helps to get the snow and subject right. Overcast light like you shot these in, makes it hard to hold detail in the snow. Bright days have a different set of problems.

The next thing in your photos that can be imporved is composition. The Rule of Thirds recommends that you divide your photos into a grid of 9 boxes and place your main subject on one of the grid lines. This makes for a much more engaging and dynamic composition than a centered subject. For photos like these, where focus is an issue, prefocus on the gate where you plan to shoot, and then recompose and wait for your subject. I also like to shoot a little wide to leave some room to crop later.

Good to see some ski photos on this forum. I started shooting skiing this year and it's a lot harder than I expected. I haven't shot any racing, though. Mostly I'm working on good powder shots.

Hope that helps. Let us know if you have more questions. I'm curious about your focus. Is it good or are you having trouble with it. You'll find that there's a lot of auto focus technique experience on this forum. Focus is critical for goo action photos. So there are a lot of techniques to ensure good, sharp images. If you're having trouble, we can help.

Thanks for the comments John. I will try out some of your suggestions next time out.

I have a newbie question though. I am brand new to the SLR and I understand how to set the exposure compensation in the priority modes, but in manual mode I am not sure exactly what you mean by "overexpose by one stop".