My First Season Shooting Dirt Racing - Part 2: experiment

I got my first race day under my belt and I felt like I did a decent job shooting and picking up the flow of the race. That’s to say prep and pit time to hot laps and qualifying to the heats, then features.

The problem was I didn’t really love any of the images from that first race. They seemed pretty vanilla, panning shots from the infield and the pit shots were timid and at a distance. Sure there were a few that came out well, good composition, good framing, blurred background, but anyone with a decent knowledge of how their camera works can grab those shots.

While I was at Wayne County I took mental notes of different spots that I could safely shoot from. I came up with a list of three or four spots I wanted to try out.

1) Behind the fence at turn 1

2) Behind the guard rail at turn 4

3) Top of the stands next to the race control center

I love shooting at turn 1 looking down the front straight. the guard rails allow for some cool leading lines and potential framing. Plus at some of this spots we get to see the ever elusive “right side of the car”.

As I explored more spots I also wanted to challenge myself with finding little holes to shoot through.

The shots of the 5 and 22g were taken through the cockpit of another modified that was parked in the infield.

Another thing I started playing around with was how I held my camera. I started to add a tilt to some of my images, especially in the infield. Some with more flavor than the standard horizontal panning shot. I really liked playing around with this. I thought that tilting to the direction the car is going looked better than the opposite. It could just be my preference.

I knew fairly quickly that even though racing is bad ass, cool, and fun to watch I would get bored fairly quickly if I just stuck with the infield panning shot. I want to bring something new that no one else is really trying and sometimes. I remember I was trying to do something while laying behind a disc plow that was in the infield. It didn’t work out, oh well at least I tried.

I’m always inspired by the top tier photographers that get to shoot the highest levels of motorsport. They inspire me to push what I can shoot and how I can offer a different look to something that a handful of other people are shooting at the same time.