Capturing action in your photographs

Often a bit of trial and error and a little bit more luck, capturing the perfect action image is no simple task! For this shot with Hope, we had to do the hair toss I believe 3 times before one of the images from the series was something we were both happy with. Here are some tips and tricks for capturing your own action images.

• Use a fast shutter speed. This serves to "freeze" the smallest portion of time for that crisp image. Make sure to adjust aperture and ISO in order to have a balanced exposure.
• Set your camera to continuous shooting, whatever the maximum burst rate of images per second.
• Use the highest quality, fastest memory card you can. A faster write time will reduce buffering in the camera and allow you to hit your max burst rate.
• Preview each series as you go and make adjustments as needed.
• If you're using flash, know that the recycle rate may not be able to keep up with your camera's burst rate. Toss the dark images. But rest assured, there is nothing wrong with your flash.

If you keep at it and think critically about all the steps involved, you should be able to capture some amazing action photographs. No, go create!