Memphis Monster Jam Event was recently held in Memphis. One of the things I’m passionate about is photographing events, company events, action events, capturing the moment and telling a story with the photographs. Early in February Feld Motorsports contacted me to photograph the Monster Jame Memphis event at FedEx Forum.

Families of all ages packed the FedEx Forum over two days to watch the event. The event kicked off with the Pit party where you get to see some of the trucks and drivers up close. Get your photograph with driver and truck, it was a highlight for many.

As in most cases the lighting inside to photograph events is more challenging than photographing outside. In some events you may not be allowed to use flash, and even if you were, the distance to subject would be too great, and flash would be rendered useless.

This photograph was taken during the wheelie competition. Iron Man was the crowd favorite taking the wheelie competition and the overall freestyle competition on the final day. Monster Mutt came it second. The Monster Jam Event in Memphis was fun and challenging to photograph because of the lighting.

Tips

• In order to freeze motion you have to have a fast shutter speed. Depending on the subject and speed, I typically start at 1/500 of a second with my test shots. No lower unless I want to pan to show speed. Then I adjust according.
• I will usually shoot with an F stop of F8 – F11 for this.
• Use fast lenses. Meaning something that has F 2.8 or faster to allow more light into your photograph. The challenge for many then becomes the cost of those lenses. They are not cheap.
• When you set your set your F stop and shutter speed, it may not allow enough light to expose the image. So, then I need to make two choices. 1. Up the ISO, the downside to that is it enters digital noise into the photograph. Digital noise are those grainy looking pixels in an image. You can correct most in post processing, but it tends to soften the image and you lose sharpness. 2. Up your exposure compensation. Most cameras will allow you to adjust between 1-5 stops. I used 5 stops.

Check out more Monster Jam Memphis Photos.