Supercars
Friday October 29, 2021. Supercars return to action after an extended covid induced layoff. Having not been able to attend any sort of sport for months I was itching to get out and both watch but more so photograph any sort of sport.
Supercars, and car racing in general I have always found to be difficult to photograph for a number of reasons. The speed of a moving subject, the fact that you are shooting an object, not a person – at least most of the time, and an unpredictability of any sort of unique action shot! Shooting rugby league, basketball or cricket, you can predict when a try is about to be scored, a fast break dunk or to a lesser extent a wicket fall. With cars, the majority of action is in the speed of the vehicle, maybe a passing move, a moment on two wheels, or if you are in the right spot at the right time, an accident or a loose.
But that has not stopped me, each time I have shot the Supercars, I have taken 1000+ pictures on the day. What it does afford you, is the opportunity to practice your technique each time. Be it aiming for a panned in focus shot of a car doing 200+ km/h, or the opposite, a still with the blur of the car streaking through the middle. Here though lies the biggest challenge with shooting cars – finding variety in how you capture essentially the same image each time.
Back in its day, the race at Homebush in Sydney, to me, was a great experience, fast in parts, slow in others, areas for action and great viewing vantage points. However, with a camera there was one significant problem – the wire safety fences! Obviously, they can’t be removed, but for photography purposes, they ruin nearly every picture. The same can be said for the street circuit on the Gold Coast, big ugly fences that put a weird grey filter over every photo you take. In comparison, Sydney Motorsport Park, being a permanent track, does not have the same fences around the entire track – nor though can you get as close to the action as the street circuits – so it is give and take!
What do you do? The simple answer is work with what you have got access to. Homebush is history, but it did feature the ability to walk through the team garages and see up close the behind the scenes action. Sydney Motorsport Park, pre Covid also had a degree of this accessibility – that is where I took the two wheel pictures below – showing the damage and wear on tyres and also the personalised wheels that Simona de Silvestro had. What I find key here, is the photos themselves are nothing special, BUT they differ from the other 1000 odd pictures taken that day, and that makes them unique and a point of difference. Another unique image that has started become more common, is the glowing brake discs during a night race. It is one of those features that unless you are looking for it, most people will completely disregard, but captured correctly, becomes a talking point picture.
Come race time though, most people will be watching the action on the track, and that typically means a limited selection in the types of photos you will take. The traditional picture of a perfectly centred car with limited distraction in the background, nice and sharp – this is almost like your styled portrait picture – although not as easy to capture. For these, a slow part of the track or for that matter even a warm up lap will work a treat, as only you will know when the actual picture was captured, you could say it was on the last lap as they headed for victory, no one would really know.
The blurry pictures – both the background blurred with a sharp car, or a sharp background with the blurred car. Both give a real feel for the speed of the sport, and captured well, both tell their own story. With the blurry car, the ideal is to get enough detail so that the team and or driver can be made out – the cars are ideal for this as you can tell a team simply by its livery.
The blurry background is a little harder, and does take a fair bit of practice to get right, but even the not so perfect pictures can still be keepers, as they fall in between these two types of pictures. I find myself having to warm up for these shots, as you need to follow the car for a few seconds. Plant the feet, pivot at the hips while keeping your head and arms steady, also watching both the track and the view finder at the same time. One car pass could result in 6-10 photos depending on your settings, this is where your shot count builds up.
Finding the best settings is obviously a trial and error situation each time, shooting with shutter speeds at either end of the scale requires impacts your exposure rate, and more often than not, it is best to work in Manual mode for this, so you have full control over your camera – manual focus too! Focus on the centre of the track, and centre frame of your sweep.
When those pictures are captured and you’re looking for the next unique image, try mixing the same image up, put your camera on an angle or use the zoom of your lens instead of the sweeping motion. The beauty of car racing photography is in its repetition, giving you the chance to practice and refine your techniques and variations every couple of minutes. Throw in a few unique opportunities such as behind the scenes or garage access and your portfolio from an event can be so much more than twenty four versions of the same picture, as someone once said, “these cars just go around and around and around”.
