Photographing the Monster Jam

I photographed something new this weekend, the Monster Jam at Quicken Loans Arena. The Cleveland Photographic Society arranged for it's members to photograph the event. We were given Media Passes and were able to go down on the arena floor and get some up close shots of the Monster Trucks. We had the floor to ourselves for a little while but before we knew it, swarms of kids and their parents joined us on the floor to meet the drivers and get their autographs. During the show, thanks to our Media Passes we were allowed to roam around the Arena and get photos from various vantage points as long as we didn't get in anyone's way.

Before the show started the lighting wasn't very bright and I was worried about how I was going to get some good photos of the trucks in action, but once the show started they turned up the lights, I still had to crank the ISO up to 800 to get a high enough shutter speed to get sharp photos of the moving trucks. A Shutter speed of 1/250 seemed to do the trick. I experimented with slower shutter speeds between 1/100 to 1/250 to try and get tires blurred and the trucks sharp. If I used too slow of a speed the trucks became unsharp, somewhere around 1/125 to 1/160 of a second gave me the effect I was looking for. Sure a lot of shots didn't come out, but that's the fun of photography, trying different stuff and see what works and what doesn't work, that's how you learn.


Click the photo to go to the gallery
To see a slide show go here: Monster Jam Slide Show