How to make your action sports photography stand out – professional insights

Shooting action sports photos is a technically demanding pursuit. Nailing autofocus, exposure and flash on the fly while a skateboarder or BMX rider attempts a gravity-defying trick puts the photographer under pressure. But mastering a few key techniques can make capturing these intense moments far more achievable – and opens up new creative possibilities.

So how does Lorenz Holder do it? The fine-art action sports photographer and Canon Ambassador has developed a distinctive visual style, in which the subject is captured relatively small in the frame, performing a trick in a striking location. Yet Lorenz is constantly exploring different techniques to keep his work fresh, whether that’s shooting in black and white, getting creative with flash, or incorporating reflections that cause viewers to look twice. Here he shares his techniques for better focusing, timing, composition, and exposure.

With so many variables to balance during a shoot, Lorenz typically relies on Manual exposure mode to keep his settings consistent from shot to shot. "When I take portraits of the athletes, I always use Aperture Priority so that I can preset my aperture to control the depth of field," he says. "The shutter speed isn’t too much of a concern when I’m shooting portraits, so having that automatically applied doesn’t really matter.

"When I’m shooting action, though, I prefer Manual mode so that I have full control of everything. I know my shutter speed will stay at, say, 1/2000 sec, and I can change the depth of field with the aperture in order to show more or less of the foreground.”

Depth of field is an important consideration when you include so much of the surroundings in the frame. So how does Lorenz balance the fast shutter speeds required to freeze motion with the small aperture that may be required to extend the depth of field? "You need to decide how much foreground you want to show,” he says. "If it’s not that important, then you can open the lens a little more – which means you can choose a lower ISO.”

Despite a lower ISO setting giving better image quality, Lorenz doesn’t hesitate to push the setting higher when he wants to use a smaller aperture to increase the depth of field, or to enable a faster shutter speed to freeze action.

As well as setting up your camera for creative action photography, Lorenz advises being ready for the environment you’re shooting in. If you’ve pre-visualised a shot, consider what can help to make your shoot run more smoothly.

For example, Lorenz packs a broom so he can brush small stones off a street and make it skateable. He also keeps rubber boots in his car in case conditions are muddy.

It’s the same level of preparation with his camera gear, he says. "I want to have a tripod, and plan what lens I need. I’ll set my camera up on the tripod, get my composition sorted. Everything I can do before the action starts means I can simply focus on capturing the right moment.”

Lorenz shoots with the Canon EOS R5 Mark II, a camera that complements his creative action photography thanks to its high-speed burst rate of up to 30fps using electronic shutter and its 45MP back-illuminated stacked CMOS sensor, which minimises distortion in moving subjects.

You might expect an action sports specialist to routinely set a camera to its fastest continuous shooting speed, but Lorenz is more selective for practical reasons.

"On a skateboard shoot, I can just burst at 30fps, knowing I will get the right moment. You start shooting a little early, then the skateboard flips around and you get the perfect moment every time.”

Using flash requires a more economical approach, though, as a flashgun needs to recycle between shots – although some Canon Speedlites, such as the Canon Speedlite EL-5 and Speedlite EL-1 (Ver.2), can recycle rapidly. This limits the use of high-speed burst shooting with flash. The fastest continuous shooting speeds are typically achieved using a mirrorless camera's electronic shutter, but even though the EOS R5 Mark II supports flash in this mode, in practice the flash still limits how quickly you can shoot continuous bursts.

Reducing the flash output can shorten recycling times and allow you to capture quicker sequences, but in bright conditions you often need a higher flash output to balance or overpower ambient light. The further a Speedlite is from the subject, the more power is required. As Lorenz explains: "You can't really use burst unless you choose a low power setting,” Lorenz says. "But that doesn't help much if the flash is too far away from your subject."

It’s for this reason that he recommends learning to anticipate the moment rather than taking a "spray and pray" approach. "If you only put your trust in bursting then you won’t be prepared when you need to capture the one perfect moment when you’re using flash.”

Some Canon EOS cameras, including the EOS R6 Mark III and EOS R7, feature a Pre-continuous shooting or Pre-shooting option. This is a real advantage when capturing unpredictable action or sudden movements, as it allows you to start capturing images before you fully press the shutter button, then save those images when you do press it.

"I think this is a really useful feature for wildlife photography, especially where you have a bird in the frame and you don't know when it will take off,” says Lorenz. "If you don't react at the precise point where it happens, you know that it's still on the camera.”

Focusing is another challenge when it comes to action sports, but Lorenz says the intelligent subject detection in the latest EOS R System mirrorless cameras has been a game-changer.

"When I was using DSLRs, I would often prefocus during really important shoots rather than trusting the autofocus, but now there’s no need to do this. You can select the type of subject you’re shooting and then rely on the camera’s subject tracking.”

The sophisticated tracking powered by Deep Learning is particularly useful for action photography, where the subject may be moving at speed, small in the frame, or wearing a helmet and goggles. In these circumstances the camera can recognise and continue tracking a person or object even if it turns upside down, making a prediction that it is still the same subject even when the feature it was initially tracking – such as the person's eye or face – is no longer visible.

Lorenz sometimes includes reflections in his images – captured in everything from a puddle of water to a shop window – which requires more consideration when it comes to focusing and depth of field.

"If you shoot the reflection directly, as a mirrored image, then the camera’s autofocus will work as normal,” he says. But it can be trickier when you want to include both the subject and its reflected image. "If I were to focus on the person directly and tilt the camera down towards their reflection in a puddle, then the focus would be off. If you focus on the puddle, then the person won’t be sharp.”

Lorenz's solution: he sets the subject detection to People in the AF menu of his EOS R5 Mark II, and the camera’s autofocus solves this problem for him. "The camera detects the person reflected in the puddle and locks onto them.”

He suggests switching to manual focus if you want to try more selective focusing techniques. "To create a more dreamy look, where the person in the background is a little blurred, try pre-focusing directly on the puddle of water.”

Several EOS R System cameras – including the EOS R5 Mark II – also offer Flexible Zone AF, which allows you to define a specific area of the frame for autofocus. By restricting the autofocus to a specific part of the picture, you can help guide the camera to focus on either the subject or their reflection. For example, you can position the zone over the top or the bottom of the frame, depending on where your subject appears.

Looking back to the time when he was first starting to explore action sports photography, Lorenz says the aspect he found hardest to master was how to work with flash.

"When you’re shooting with available light, you can control everything with the shutter speed, aperture and ISO. And then you add an external light to your scene. How bright should it be? How do I control the mix of flash and ambient light?”

Many photographers will empathise with this. Flash can add a dynamic dimension to action photography, especially when combined with a relatively slow shutter speed in order to provide a striking blend of sharpness (from the flash) and blur. But getting the best from it takes practice.

Lorenz suggests keeping it simple to start with. Setting a Speedlite to Manual rather than E-TTL II gives you a consistent, predictable output that allows you to experiment with the exposure settings on your camera to get the balance between flash and ambient light that you’re looking for.

"You can really just control it with your shutter speed,” Lorenz says. "If you raise the ISO, everything will turn brighter. Lower it, and everything goes darker. It’s the same with the aperture. If you close the aperture, everything gets darker – both the flash-lit subject and the ambient light in the scene.”

He explains that shutter speed is different. The flash is so fast that the shutter speed affects only the exposure of the ambient light. "If you use a slower shutter speed, more available light comes into the camera and the background gets brighter. Set a faster shutter speed and less available light comes in, giving you a darker background. But each time, the flash is still on the same power.”

Achieving the right balance of exposure and blur may require some adjustment to all three settings, and you will need to activate the Speedlite’s high-speed sync if you set a shutter speed faster than the maximum flash sync speed.


Watch Lorenz Holder's video tutorial on shooting reflections in motion, on Canon Club.