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Have you ever tried to shoot someone in motion and wondered why it just did not turn out like you imagined? From my experience, shooting hundreds of athletes over several decades, it all comes down to timing. And to get timing right you need to spend some time to observe the action you want to capture. For example this shot of double Olympic Gold Medalist Rosie MacLennon would have been absolutely impossible if we had not spent a bit of time together doing some dry runs of the move so that I could observe a) how her hair was going to flow b) when is the peak moment when her arm and leg movements change direction c) what is her face doing during this highly athletic maneuver? By spending a bit of time watching and noting all these little details, we did this entire shoot for a fund raising calendar in under 15 minutes – with barely a wasted shot.

But let’s say you don’t have the luxury of hanging out with an Olympian discussing how you will photograph her. If you want to get a great shot of your kid playing soccer, your cycling mates swooping around a hairpin or that moment your grandma does an overhead smash in pickle ball, before you even take out your camera or phone…watch and observe. Look for the moments when the action peaks or pauses, because in all sports or dance or play there are numerous repetitive movements. Once you take note of when and how these movements happen, you can anticipate them and give yourself the best chance of getting that shot.

And timing also comes down to your use of equipment. All photographic devices from $100,000 medium format cameras to your iPhone have something called shutter lag. This is the time between you hitting the shutter button and your device capturing the the image. In many cases the lag is only dozens of milliseconds but to give you a frame of reference, 23 milliseconds difference (the shutter lag on my $10,000 DSLR) in the Rosie shot would have seen her knees bent and her right arm down at her waist! So in order to avoid capturing a ton of awkward, weird in between moments, practice hitting the shutter button just before the peak moment you want to capture. It is a bit of an art, but with practice you will nail it. And yes I hear all you kids saying “But I can just put my iPhone on Live capture” or “my digital camera has a motor drive”. Live on a phone reduces image quality dramatically and is often blurred, which you will notice when you blow them to actual size. Motor drives are great and I use the function a lot, however from experience, even with high speed motor drive if you do not anticipate and get the timing right you will capture a lot of in between moments and miss the great ones.

So go out there and waste some pixels practicing so that the next photo you post on @Insta will trend like a funny cat video…