Citius means “faster”

This is the name of a new international athletics meeting in Bern. Several months ago, the organizers asked me if I would like to be the official meeting photographer. A few days before the event, I am really looking forward to it.

The background is remarkable. The organizers are six young athletes. When I say young, I mean really young. Their names are (l to r):  Abdul Kadir Omar (age 29), Bas de Graf (21), Franco Noti (21), Raphael Clemencio (24),  Julien Christen (19), and Matyas Kobrehel (22). Out of nothing they put together a budget of 150’000 francs and were really successful in attracting international top athletes.

100m women. This is the event that everybody is looking forward to. Mujinga Kambundji, bronze medalist at the 2018 Indoor Worlds, will do her first ever international race on her home track. And she will face tough competition. Alex Burghardt from Germany, Viktoriya Zyabkina from Kazakhstan, Ivet Lalova-Collio from Bulgaria will be in the blocks. Quite likely that some of these runners will meet again in the final of the Europeans.

Another interesting question is how the Swiss relay members will perform. As a team, the relay did a world class race last week (42.71 secs). However, there is still room for improvement. Hence, the eyes will be on Ajla del Ponte and Salomé Kora too.

4x400m relay races. For both the men and the women there will be 4x400m relay races. Several national teams (SUI, BEL, GBR) will try to qualify for the Europeans. The 4×400 is special to me. I loved racing it myself. Full of action, exciting, and really really hard. I’m really looking forward. The Swiss will line up with:

Women: Cornelia Halbheer, Robine Schürmann, Sarah Atcho, and Léa Sprunger
Men: Alain Hervé Mfomkpa, Joel Burgunder, Ricky Petrucciani, and Charles Devantay

100m/200m men. The Swiss Champion Alex Wilson is in top form and will run the 100m against the two fast Brazilians Rodrigo Pereira and Derick de Souza Silva. Alex is in top shape. Will he break his national record? In the 200m race things are even more exciting. There are 4 athletes with PBs below 20.40secs and Alex is one of them. Again, the Swiss national record is in danger.

200m women. Beth Dobbin (GBR), Agne Serksniené (LTU) and Zoey Clark (GBR) are the fastest starters. It is very likely that the winner must run below 23.

800m women. Egle Balciunaite from Lithuania leads the field with a sub 2mins PB. She is well known in Switzerland and she may be sure to receive a lot of support. Among the fastest Swiss is the young super talent Delia Sclabas who, like Mujinga, will have a home race in Bern.

800m men. Four runners have PBs of 1:46 or 1:45, Joshua Ralph (AUS) is the fastest. Will one of the three fastest Swiss (Jonas Schöpfer, Hugo Santa Cruz, Pascal Furtwängler) make a leap forward and qualify for the Europeans?

1500m men. A similar situation. The field is led by the world class runner Ryan Gregson (AUS) who ran 3:31 before! In a field with five other sub 3:40 runners this will be the chance for the Swiss starters Jan Hochstrasser and Julien Wanders to do great things.

3000m men. Five African runners will try to make the race fast. It’ll be interesting to see what the best Swiss will achieve in this field.

110m hurdles. The Swiss shooting star is Jason Joseph. After winning the Junior Europeans last year, this is his rookie season over the 107cm hurdles. And he is doing really well. Two weeks ago he ran 13.51 seconds. Will he break the Swiss record? His opponents, Devon Hill (USA) and David King (GBR) are world class hurdlers. It’ll be really exciting.

Pole Vault women. A nice international competition is waiting with Minna Nikkanen and Wilma Murto from Finland and Marion Lotout from France, all with PBs of 4.60 and more. Unfortunately, the Swiss vaulter Angelica Moser is still injured.

Long jump men. The Swiss jumper Chris Ullmann just recovered from a surgery. In his second competition he showed that is improving quickly. His season best is already 7.76m. In Bern he has the honor to take on the indor world champion Mauro da Silva (BRA).

Link to the meeting website

Ticket sales

Link to Mujinga Kambundji’s website

As the indoor season comes to an end, I’d like to explain some basic elements of what I think makes a good photo of fast moving athletes, especially in low light situations.

F2.8, 1/30sec, 28mm. Taken on January, 25 2018 in Grenchen (Tissotvelodrome)

The basic problem: Imagine there is low light and you shoot in the full auto mode. The camera will (among others) reduce the shutter speed. So you end up with a blurred picture because of the fast movement. In my beginnings the following picture would have been one of my better result. Needless to say, this picture is crap.

A crap picture with motion blur. 1/160 sec, 1000 ISO, f3.2, 14mm, Canon EOS 5D3.

Theoretically, you can turn the above picture into a sharp one as follows: Increase the shutter speed to 1/1250 sec (this is 1/8 of the previous exposure time). To compensate choose an 8-times higher ISO value, 8’000. If your camera tolerates ISO 8’000 you will get a nice and sharp picture. There are great cameras on the market that tolerate ISO 8’000. They are expensive, though.

The usual next step is to use a flash. How does this work? Make sure you underexpose a little, then let the flash pop in with the right amount to freeze the scenery. If you don’t underexpose, you end up with a strange mix of blurred and frozen movement. Some people like this. I find it just awkward.

A flash has disadvantages.

• First, they are forbidden at many events, for good reasons.
• Second, if some athletes are close and some far away, the close ones might be overexposed and the far away ones underexposed (see this picture). This looks very un-natural.
• Third, the flash freezes the motion. Hence when shooting cars, or cyclists from the side, the wheels seemingly stand still. Here is an example. Isn’t it strange that the riders are in a 45 degree steep curve and manage to balance their bike on one spot?

Mark Cavendish and Iljo Keisse at the Zurich Sixday Nights shot with flash: notice the frozen wheels

To be clear. I’m not saying flashes are always bad. They saved my neck in many situations (I shot the above picture because I had to get a sharp picture of superstar Mark Cavendish. No time for experiments). Photography masters produce terrific results with flashes. For instance, look at this picture by one of my idols, Kristof Ramon. It’s just that frozen pictures from the side are not good in most situations.

What is the solution? Panning. Don’t regard the low light as your enemy. Make it your friend. Panning solves more than one problem in sports photography. The following picture of Jens Voigt is a nice example.

Jens Voigt setting up a new hour record in the Velodrome Suisse

The difference to the previous picture of Mark Cavendish is obvious. Jens’ picture expresses speed, Mark’s picture does not. Both have blurred background, but look twice. The blur in Mark’s picture is unnatural due to the flash. The blur in Jens’ picture is nice, even, and natural.

So how did I do this? I set the shutter speed to 1/160. This is eight times less than it needs to freeze the motion (some say you should take 1/30, but in most cases this is not necessary). To get a sharp picture, I chose a single autofocus point, concentrated on Jens’ face and moved the camera exactly with Jens’ speed. As a result, the face is sharp, the rest is blurred.

The advantages are clear. The background is blurred, Jens is in focus. Moreover, the picture expresses the speed – it is exciting. So exciting that a super-sized copy is hanging on the wall of the Swiss Velodrome.

So what are the drawbacks? To be honest, panning isn’t easy. There is always a risk that you fail. Here are my tips.

1. Concentrate a lot. Any distraction will cause a blurred shot. If the eye is blurred, delete the picture.

2. Choose the ideal distance (if possible). 20-30 meters and a light tele lens are much easier than the 3.5 meters with Jens’ picture. Here is an example from athletics taken with 25 meters distance and 135mm. I took pictures of every heat. Each(!) attempt was successful.

Clélia Rard-Reuse: Fourth at the European Championships 2016: 1/125sec, F7.1, 135mm

3. If you are forced to shoot from a closer distance, anticipate the changing angular velocity of your subject. It is fastest just when it passes your position. If you don’t anticipate the effect, your panning will be too slow.

4. Train this. Your success rate will increase a lot. I have a friend who shoots professional pictures for the automotive industry. Guess what? He trains panning regularly.

5. Choose a rich background. A blue sky or a concrete wall would hide the effect. So you have no benefit but the risk of blurring the image.

Conclusion. Some people that see my pictures respond with “you have a good camera“. Yes I do. This blog is not about a camera. It is about a shooting technique that I even applied successfully with quite cheap cameras.