The Speed of Sight: Photographing Cycling from a Technical and Emotional Edge

Track cycling is a brutally honest sport. There’s no room for hesitation or distraction, every pedal stroke is a statement of intent, and every split-second can define triumph or failure. To photograph it is not merely to press a shutter, but to learn to breathe with the athlete, to anticipate their acceleration, and to translate speed into stillness without losing the emotion of the moment.

For this series, I worked primarily with two lenses: a Canon 70–300mm, perfect for panning shots from a distance, and a Prakticar 135mm f/2.8, a fully manual lens with an old soul, demanding patience, intuition, and deep respect for the craft.

The 70–300mm: Precision in Motion

The 70–300mm became my ally for panning shots. This technique, aiming to freeze the subject in motion while blurring the background, is as difficult as it is rewarding. With this lens, I was able to follow the cyclists’ rhythm, shoot in controlled bursts, and capture that precise moment when the body and bike aligned with the curve of the velodrome.
The lens compression helped emphasize the aerodynamic form of the riders, while the background, lines, lights, and crowd, morphed into streaks of energy. In those moments, photography stopped being static and became an extension of the race itself.

The Prakticar 135mm: Taming the Impossible

Using a manual lens like the Prakticar in a high-speed event is not a comfortable choice, it’s a deliberate challenge. No autofocus, no stabilization, no modern luxuries. Just glass, metal, and the precision of your eye. Every shot with this lens was a gamble: manually metering light, pre-focusing, and hoping the rider would hit the visual plane I had envisioned. But when it worked, the results were unmatched.

The Prakticar’s sharpness, its optical character, and the unique depth separation it provides gave the images a nearly cinematic feel. Using it felt like returning to the essence of the craft: observe, anticipate, shoot… and wait.

Cycling as Metaphor and Truth
My photographs aim to do more than just document a sport. What I try to capture is what cycling represents: willpower, endurance, solitude, focus, chaos and order at once. There’s a raw beauty in those tense faces, in muscles vibrating under strain, in bikes slicing through the air like spears.

Color plays a vital role. Cuba’s red and blue aren’t just aesthetics; they’re history, identity, struggle. The black and orange of another team, by contrast, speak of strategy, elegance, distinction. Each image tells a different story, yet they all orbit the same essence: keep moving, even when it hurts.

This body of work is not just a technical showcase. It’s a visual manifesto about the tension between body and machine, between control and chaos, between technique and passion. The 70–300mm gave me the distance to observe. The Prakticar forced me to be fully present. But it was the cyclists, with their strength, discipline, and vulnerability; who turned each frame into a small victory against oblivion.