THE SPEED OF LIGHT

How did I end up in this Speedskating stadium in Alkmaar with the best women in the world (for this sport also known as The Netherlands) competing at the KPN Marathon Cup?
Well ? my girlfriends niece is one of the women in the competition, so that?s a good excuse to occasionally go there to take pictures. These speed skating stadiums are quite big since the skating takes place on a 400 meter track. The light, sound and motion make it a rather confusing place ? at least to me. The sounds inside the stadium get lots of echo?s because of the hard ice and building materials. The light on the ice is quite bright and the stands are more or less in the dark. And then of course there is the speed of the skaters in their fluorescent suits. Up to 60 of them competing at the same for about an hour or so. I find it hard to concentrate on the competition and the participants themselves.
The race itself I experience as some kind of blur of speed, light and sounds.
This blurry mixture is the sensation I tried to capture and hope to convene to anyone who is looking at the image. And I hope viewers like the abstracted blurry (painting like) composition, even if they don?t recognize the specific occasion.  

THE PICTURE
OK so there I am with that sensation of speed, light and sound in my head and with my mid range equipment in my hands. A Nikon D90, and a Tamron 28-300 mm zoom (42-450 full frame), no flash and a mono-pod (which I didn't use for this image).
In the stadium I need time to get in some kind of flow and rhythm for capturing the shot. I get into that flow just by making a lot of trial and error images to get the exposure right (the right mix of shutter, aperture and ISO) in combination with the panning and simultaneous zooming in or out. For this shot I positioned myself in one of the two corners of the ice ring.
Bing in the start of the bend - partially looking into the straight - reduces the lateral motion of the skaters compared to my position. They were skating towards me just starting to turn into the corner which causes them to have parallel body positions leaning into the corner. From this position it is possible to have more control on the panning and zooming than when they pass me at a right angle at some 40-50 km per hour.  

Date and time: 07-jan-2012 19:40
Location: De Meent Speedskating Stadium. Alkmaar. The Netherlands
Camera: Nikon D90
Lens: Tamron VR 28-300 F 3,5 ? 6,3 G
AF: Continuous (Dynamic Field)
Exposure: Manual (spot metering)
F/10 S 1/5 sec ISO 800
RAW (NEF)    

PROCESSING
For post processing this image I use Nikon Capture NX2
My Workflow: Steps
-          Adjust White Balance => broad spectrum fluorescent light 4200K
-          Noise reduction: intensity 10% sharpening 5
-          LCH 0.90 (LCH lightness chroma and hue)
-          Layer: BW conversion 50% overlay
-          Layer Contrast Brightness: Contrast 0 brightness -50% (blending mode normal 50%)
-          Crop  

LCH Lightness Chroma and Hue is a bit comparable to the levels setting in photoshop. In this case sliding the middle ruler to 0.90 darkening the middle greytones slightly without altering the highlights or shadows.
The blending in of a BW layer helps me in enhancing the contrast without over saturating the image.
I sometimes add a (radial gradiented) mask in order to get a very subtle vignette in the way the effect is applied. I sometimes use this with LCH too and most often I use it with the application of the layer with contrast and brightness setting (vignette effect) With this image I haven't used the vignetting (masking) options in the application of the several effects. I've also uploaded the original to judge for yourself the "before" and "after"  

Three tips to get an image like this.

-          Get into the flow of the occasion on a more abstract level than the actual details of what is there and what is going on.

-          Personally I need a lot of test shots to get into a rhythm and to hone in to what works best in that particular situating, with the equipment I have at hand. Getting the right mix in the exposure set up for a panning and zooming shot takes some or a lot of test shots. Practice and go for trial and error. I came home with about 80 pictures and must have deleted over 100 on the spot. These 80 remaining pictures range in quality from this one to pretty usable. Some 15 have family album value, with pics of our niece and of her boyfriend (competing with the men) 10 to 15 are good enough to really get my teeth in to develop them further. And I hope about five of them will be worth having printed on canvas for an exhibition later this year.

-          Blend your artistic intent with the gear you have. Make the best of your vision and material at hand, be it a low end cellphone or a high end pro set up. And have fun along all the way.  

Willem de Vlaming
Amateur photographer.
I take pictures because photography lets me see things in a way I've never seen before.

Excellent tutorial Willem!

Thanks for this great tutorial. 

Great tutorial, thank you.

Great picture, very good tutorial. Thanks.

Thank you so much for sharing the "behind the scene" side of this impressive image. I love motion blurs and this one is over the top.