When shooting action sports there’s a variety of methods to display the movement. Aside from dragging your shutter or creating a boxed sequence, I’m a big fan of the seamless sequence. I get quite a few questions about how to create a photo like the one above and have simplified my process below.
Ideally, you could place the camera on a tripod in a position where the action wouldn’t overlap on multiple exposures and fire off a burst. Quickly merge, and poof your done, yet this is generally not practical.
The photo above was shot at 17mm, and I panned with the rider so that my flash could light him properly. On such a wide lens, there’s quite a bit of distortion around the edges of the lens which creates a challenge when trying to merge multiple shots. In order to remedy this I utilized the “Photomerge” function in Photoshop (Default setting of Auto).
The end result is a properly distorted background with layer masks on each layer. From here I use the quick selection to highlight the rider in each frame, and paint the area white (opaque) and reorder the layers so the later frames are on top.
Some complain that it’s a bit of a tedious process, but I counter by asking them to imagine how hard it might have been 5 years ago.
To Recap:
- Shoot relatively wide, with distinct foreground/background objects.
- “Photomerge” (Auto) to create a background plate
- Paint the layer masks to highlight the subject
- Reorder the layers so that the image is sequentially correct.
Enjoy, and don’t forget to HAVE FUN!
