OK, when was the last time you were at a horse race — on the rail? These guys (and gals) move. Every year the Ocala Breeder’s Sales hold a race day in Ocala, Florida. In total, there are five races. I needed a strategy to photograph these bundles of energy.
Here was the plan for capturing the first race. I positioned myself about a hundred yards from the last turn on the track. I planned on shooting my Nikon D300 with 200-400mm VR lens on the monopod as the horses turned the corner. Then I’d cleverly rest my monster 200-400 lens on the track rail, reach for my D200 with 70-200mm VR lens hanging on my right shoulder and pan drag some slower speed motion blurs as they past.
In reality, it all went different and much faster. The horses rounded the turn. I shot and shot, loving the angle the jockeys and beasts were leaning slightly into the rail. At the point I started to lower the big lens and rest it on the rail, I looked up and was staring at rear ends, horses and jockeys alike.
I was forced into a different strategy for race two. It included setting up further back from the turn, giving myself more time to “drop” the D300 and switch to the D200. With only 4 races left and basically a few seconds of time to shoot per race, I needed to work fast, much faster.
A little pre-planning and testing goes a long way. I really wanted to show the action, motion, and speed of these wonderful critters. The plan was to pan, or move the camera with, the horses as they passed. This effect, when combined with a slower shutter speed, blurs the background, but leaves the subject relatively focused. But, what shutter speed would work? I would have no time to adjust during a race, so between races I shot different speeds and panned the rails on the opposite side of the track. The desired look was for the rails to be blurred slightly, but still be recognizable. I moved the camera from left to right at about the same speed as the horses had passed. OK, 1/50th of a second looked good. Imagine that, just 1/50th of a second is “slow” enough to show a lot of blur.
I was very happy with the final panning results. I wish I had a little more time to work. I would guess, in the entire afternoon, I only had about 50 seconds when the horses were within range to be shooting.
The last shots of the day were on the first turn of the track where the horses come straight out of the gates in a line. This I shot from a distance and I really wanted a sharp clean image, so no panning here. Besides they were coming at me, so panning was out. I set the Nikon D300 to aperture priority mode on f/8. This final image was captured at 1/1250 of a second. Just think — there are 75,000 of those in one little minute!
Camera Info – Nikon D200 and D300, Nikon 200-400mm VR Lens, and Nikon 70-200mm VR lens
