How to work with Long Exposure in cycling images

So I'm really happy in our new home country Sweden. The only thing (besides moorkoppen en kroketten) I miss are the Amsterdam city scenes. So when we had the chance to visit Holland just a couple of weeks ago, I was excited to have the opportunity to shoot some city images again, especially some bike shots. 

As a sports photographer it's pretty easy to make a panning shot of a bike and have everything pinsharp. Just use a very fast shutterspeed  (in this case 1/2500) at something like F4.  

But this time I wanted something different. I wanted to see the movement of the biker in the city environment. So I needed a slower shutterspeed. I tried shutterspeeds of around 1/30. And because I used lower shutterspeeds I went with a diafragma of F10 or smaller (F22).

I tried it on several locations in the city and I have to say I'm pretty happy with the results

In Lightroom I did some post processing. It's important that the face is sharp. Adding a vignette and removing strong colours in the background can be a great help to get (more) focus on the biker.

Don't forget to follow us on Facebook or 500px.

And have you already discovered our Facebook page Humans of the Nordic Region?