Intro : Whats ShiftOne Photography all about?

Hey whats up everyone, I wanted to blog a little bit about myself and what I love to do.  I will be talking a lot about photography on top of bringing some race reports and behind the scenes accounts of events.

My name is Josh Rud, I run a photography business called ShiftOne Photography and I have had a passion for art my entire life.  I've been into photography and playing with photoshop since high school (may have been a little while ago, who's counting right).  I've taken huge risks starting this business, quit my job, working completely for myself. I also do photoshop work, mainly for fashion photographers during the week while im not shooting motocross or anything else that comes my way.  I find editing to be a large part of photography, while I actually don't spend tons of time on my own images, if I really need to save something messed up I have the skills to do it.

When I started my business I was really interested in getting into automotive photography. I have a huge passion for cars, building motors, driving ..(safely) and just looking at cool cars!  Turns out this wasn't the best plan in the world for a newcomer.  Since then I have gotten pretty far shooting motocross, but I really love shooting family photos and landscapes, just about anything!

I have a huge passion for being out at the track, finding new angles and new ways to shoot motoX.  I dont want to produce the same thing everyone else is doing. While there is only so many things you can do, and its probably been done in the past, I've worked to find a style to call my own.
I have been extremely fortunate to hook up with some great people and get myself out to shoot some major events such as Arenacross and Supercross.  Its been a great experience and every time I go out to an event I try new things to better myself.  I don't want to come up with the same shots every race I go to or it would just be boring to look at.

I literally got owned with dirt for this one! Thank god there wasnt any rocks in there!

I am out of the Chicago-land area and this summer I will be bring race reports and highlight our local riders in Illinois district. I also plan on getting out to some national races.  Once the fall rolls around it will be back to the Arenacross series and covering more east coast Supercross which I cant wait for.  Shooting indoor motocross has got to be pretty high on the list of difficult things to photograph.  This is not a leave the camera on auto job, it takes a lot of trial and error and knowledge of exposure to really nail this.  Some arenas you find yourself in are a total nightmare for lighting. Really dark, or different colored lights make things so much harder.  There is a ton of dedication involved to get to that track early in the morning, possibly the day before to make sure you figure out the problems and solve them before the race starts.

You can check out a bunch of my Moto event photographs as well as my other photography at my website www.ShiftOnePhoto.com

Be Sure to Follow me on Twitter and be a fan on Facebook!  Thanks!!

Drive-By Photography

So recently I've been perfecting what has been coined as drive-by photography.  I'm always out on long journeys so I decided to start taking photos of scenery while I'm driving.

Now I can't suggest anyone go out and do this because while I personally don't take my eyes off the road, you might be one to get distracted.  Safety is always first here, I have my settings all plugged in and can change my iso and shutter speed with the dial so I'm always looking straight ahead and holding the camera out the window.

As you can imagine this does end up with a lot of unusable shots, and its not your ordinary form of composition. I can see some people being purists about it and saying that your going on luck and not skill, but I don't see it that way.  The thought may have crossed my mind, but I find this as a way to pass the time and get in a lot of scenery you would not really get the same angles of.

This obviously works even better and safer if you happen to be a passenger in the car for a long trip. I suggest this method over anything else of course. You can actually time the shots your trying to get and not going so much on luck.

Now for the settings:
I'm using a canon 7d  so I set my camera to no less than 2500 shutter speed. Anything less it will not freeze time from a moving vehicle.  With such a fast shutter speed you are left with a couple options to get the brightness back up. Bump your iso, or goto a higher Fstop. 

On a bright sunny day I usually end up with 2500 shutter, f5.6 and 400-500iso  Trying to get a sunrise or a sunset is when you need to boost those numbers, and remember when your dealing with high ISO's its better to shoot a bit on the bright side, then shooting to dark and trying to bring it back.  The noise will always be worse if you shoot to dark. 

Finally here's some shots I've gotten while practicing, If I didn't tell you, I doubt you would guess I was driving except for the first one is kind of obvious.

That's a sample of some of my shots taken drive-by style, All these photos and many more are available as prints right from my website, or you can just go here ShiftOnePhoto.com