Saltaire Archives - Richard Spurdens Photography

More Dragon Boat racing

For the forth year the Bradford Dragon boat festival was held on the river Aire at Roberts Park Saltair. It is the only three day festival for Dragon boat racing in the country. I have covered it of the last few years. as it is a good opportunity to get some different type of sports action images. It can give you some good colourful images too.

Over the last few events I have taken a number of approaches to photographing the Dragon boat racing. If you want the standard freeze the action shot then a high shutter speed does the job. However for me the approach I really perfer is using a show shutter speed together with a panning action to get the background blurred.

I usually start with my shutter speed set at around 1/30 sec ( but it can vary downwards to get the really blurred colourful shapes). I also add an on- camera flash unit, with the output dialled down. (-1 is a good starting point ). But check the images to make sure that you can’t tell that there is a flash being used. This helps to freeze the water droplets spray that you get from the paddlers paddles as they work to propel the boat forward.

Show here a few of the images from this years event:

sport photography - sport photographer -colour image of dragon boat racing on the river aire at roberts park saltaire, a slow shutter speed was used together with panning to give a feel of the speed in this one the boats are all very close in the reave and there is lots of effort going into the paddling by all the crews — Richard Spurdens Photography – Dragon boat racing series – Model: Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, Lens: EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM 1/30 sec @ f-13 / ISO 100

sport photography - sport photographer -colour image of dragon boat racing on the river aire at roberts park saltaire, slow shutter speed was used to give an abstract effect with a flash firing to captured the water spray droplets — Richard Spurdens Photography – Dragon boat racing series – Model: Canon EOS 5D Mark IV Lens: EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM 1/30 sec @ f-14 / ISO 100

Events, General

Dragon boat racing

A chance to shoot some Dragon boat racing on the river Aire in Saltaire was too good to miss.

The event held at Roberts Park a World Heritage Site where the River Aire runs along the side of the park and gives a great vantage point to watch and photograph the close Dragon boat racing.

The Dragon boat racing event was billed as a team building event and the idea was that each team member would do there best to raise £50 for the Lord Mayor’s Appeal 2017 Charity: YoungMinds

As well as the boat racing there was a large number of landside attractions from stalls, food, bars and entertainment to live music and just so much more in a stunning spectacular, picturesque venue. It gave some good photographic opportunites:

So here are a few images from this years Dragon Boat racing event.

sport photography - sport photographer -colour image of dragon boat racing on the river aire at roberts park saltaire, image captures the dragon boats head — Richard Spurdens Photography – Dragon boat racing series – Canon EOS 5D Mark IV – Lens: EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM

Having taken a few classic Dragon boat racing shots, I decided that the colours in the scene might provide something different and colourful absrtact images.

I set a challenge and started to use a slow shutter speed and then added on camera flash set to second curtain sync.

Playing with different slow shutter speeds gave a set of interesting and sometimes abstract images which I really liked.

As you can see below:

dragon boat racing abstract — Canon EOS 5D Mark IV – Lens: EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM

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