How to Get Great Photos of Your Free Running

When it comes to action packed and amazing looking sports there are few more visceral and exciting to watch than free running or parkour. The basic concept in case you’ve been living under a rock is to use a city or town as essentially an urban assault course by leaping between buildings, flipping over cars and diving through railings in order to maintain a ‘flow’ from one object to a next. There are some philosophical aspirations, but essentially it’s about looking amazing and it’s no wonder that Hollywood has become such a fan of the activity featuring it in films like Casino Royale and Die Hard 4.

What this also tells us is that parkour looks amazing on film, so if you enjoy doing parkour already then you have a great opportunity to capture some amazing action packed images. The only problem is, how do you go about getting photos of something that’s so fast moving and dynamic? Here we will look at some tips that can help.

A little help from your friends

First of all, this isn’t something you’ll be able to do entirely yourself. If you want to get some great images of yourself in action then you’re going to want to have a friend or a helper come and take the photos for you so that they can get you from an outside angle as you fly through the air, flip from pillar to post or generally twirl like Spider-Man through the environment. Make sure they have a great camera and that they know what they’re doing with a camera.

The camera

When it comes to choosing a great camera you want to make sure that it’s high definition in order to capture crisp and sharp images of the environment, and that it isn’t liable to blurring which of course is a real danger when your subject is so fast moving.

At the same time you also need to bear in mind that there’s a very limited window of opportunity when it comes to capturing these great shots. For that reason there are some features that can really help your camera to perform in the situation – for instance using a camera with a rapid burst feature so that you can get action shots, or even just having a high definition camcorder so you can choose and freeze particular stills from it.

For something a bit different you should consider using a GoPro HERO camera. There are all kinds of models here such as the ‘GoPro HERO2 Motorsports Edition HD Camera‘, but any of them will work by attaching to a helmet or a bag and that way enabling you to get a first person view of the action in stunning HD. This way you can film some action without needing someone standing by to handle it for you.

The composition

There are many tips that you can use to make your action shots really pop, but generally it’s important to just take time considering all the elements. This means following lines to create depth and height, using foreground elements to give a 3D feeling or framing the shot in more interesting ways. Of course this will be down to your photographer, but it may be worth just having a word with them before letting them loose…

Oh and of course you also need to pull off some amazing stunts yourself!

Kyle Brandt is a well known name in the blogging world. He is passionate about writing and technology. So in his free time he combines both his passions and writes insightful blogs about the upcoming technologies and gadgets.