What’s this month’s image? It’s a speedway shot from the Glasgow Tigers vs Edinburgh Monarchs tie in early April. A good win for the Tigers, who won the two-legged tie on aggregate.

Did you do anything to it? If you get the exposure right there’s very little to do on these images. I’ve sharpened the image and boosted the contrast, but apart from that there’s nothing to do on this type of image.

The bulk of the work on most sports images is done at the capture stage. In terms of exposure, blowing the highlights is the cardinal sin, so you’re watching the right side of the histogram. The settings are one’s I’ve mentioned before; I shoot in manual with Auto-ISO and nudge the exposure compensation dial as required.

What’s it doing here? The start of April sees a return for the motor sport season. I’ve written about speedway before, but this pretty much the season opener at Ashfield. I made it down a couple of times last year, but I’m hoping to make a few more meetings this season. I enjoy the speedway as a spectacle and the fact that there are good images to be had is a real bonus. It is, however, a challenge.

Aperture isn’t critical in this type of shot, so the key setting is shutter speed. It’s all about panning and seeing how far you can drop the shutter speed while still retaining sharpness in the bikes and riders. That’s a little dependent on where the bikes are on the track, but between 1/60s and 1/125s gives me a keeper rate that isn’t absolutely horrendous. There’s also no substitute for practice.

The other challenge is that the opportunities are limited. A meeting consists of 15 heats and each heat - four laps of the athletics track - takes under a minute. You can only really cover about a quarter of the track, so in total you’ve probably only got about four minutes to get your shots for the afternoon.

When it works, though, I really like some of the results.

Drifting...

Jockeying for position

Getting on the Power

Wrong Line

Have you been up to much else? Photographically, there’s not been too much variety this month. We were down south for a family birthday in the middle of the month and I ended up introducing my nephew Leo to the joys of the bike racing at Oulton Park. We also swung by Jodrell Bank on the way back - the light wasn’t great, but at least I’ve got a much better idea of the lay of the land if I’m back around the area.

I also did a small shoot for a forthcoming play before ending up back at Knockhill for more bike racing and more opportunity to practice my panning technique…