In January we headed to The Lumberyard, Portland’s indoor bike park.  The owner was nice enough to let us hang out and flash the riders for a few hours on a Friday night, and grab a few beers as well (the Lumberyard has an on-site pub with a great food and drink menu selection).

The conditions for photography at the Lumberyard are about as challenging as it can get – fast moving subjects and relatively low available light mean that autofocus systems will struggle to keep up.  If you want enough depth of field to get a decently sharp image (and allow for some autofocus error), you will have to close down the aperture, which means letting in less light.  Even with an external flash, fairly high ISO levels (800-1600) were required to use smaller apertures of f/4 to f/5.6.

Despite the challenges, and the relatively low success rate of keepers/missed shots, we came away with some good images.  Thanks again to the Lumberyard, and the riders, for letting us take some photos.