For many years I watched television coverage of the World Rally Championship and thought it would be fun to spectate and a real challenge to try to take photos of this unique form of motorsports.

Eventually I would attend my first Rally of the Tall Pines that takes place annually in Bancroft, Ontario in late November and I have been back a number of times. Due to the timing and location, the public roads that comprise the rally routes are usually covered in snow making it difficult for the teams and exciting for the fans.

I feel that rallying is the most underrated form of motorsports as the driver and co-driver team do not get to practice for a couple of hours on the circuit. Instead, they venture onto the route the day before the event and cannot exceed the posted speed limits as the roads are open to the public. Driver and co-driver will take meticulous notes that will be used when running the special stage as fast as they can. This reconnaissance is called a “recce.”

Spectating and taking photos at a rally is difficult given the roads are closed while the event is taking place. Usually there are dedicated locations that the organizers have allocated for viewing. I have enjoyed a particular section at the Rally of the Tall Pines where hundreds of fans cheer encouragement and ring cowbells while the rally teams power slide their way through a twisty section of road.

To take photos I would recommend a 70-200mm zoom lens that will likely allow you to get panned shots as the cars are going by you and will also assist in getting closer images of the cars negotiating a corner.

Access to the pit area where the teams work on their cars is also a great opportunity to get photos of the drivers and co-drivers. A wide-angle lens will allow you to get shots of the cars and crew while a short zoom of around 18-135mm can provide the flexibility to take head shots of the driver/co-driver teams with their helmets on if desired. If this takes place late in the evening and into the dark it is a great time to try second shutter sync with your flash and a slow shutter speed as the cars leave the pit area.

Most rallies do not charge any admission to watch, although there may be certain grandstands or locations on the route that may carry a fee. This is an exciting and challenging form of motorsports to photograph and the atmosphere is very European. I strongly recommend doing your research to find a rally event near you!

Please note that the images accompanying this blog were taken without any media credentials.

John Larsen is this blog’s Senior International Travel Correspondent, whose website is www.photograffics.com.

The basic techniques that are required to cover a motorsports event can essentially be broken down into four categories: panning, head-on, three-quarter and close-ups.

Panning photos with visual impact require a blurred background and spinning wheels but with a sharp point of focus. This is achieved by firing your camera while smoothly following the subject as it goes by. The photographer must start to follow the subject and rotate smoothly while simultaneously pressing the shutter button. When I shoot panned photos from a specific location, I start with a higher shutter speed of perhaps 1/500 sec and will gradually slow it down to as low as 1/30 sec. This process could be considered warming up in a similar fashion to what athletes or entertainers might do. Zoom lenses such as a 70-200mm are ideal for panning as you can zoom out to possibly include more than one vehicle, or zoom in to try and get a closer image of a driver in an open cockpit racecar.

For many years I did not utilize aperture priority as I did not feel that it was necessary. However, when I am shooting head-on images, I switch to aperture priority and set the aperture to the largest opening. The camera will then determine the fastest shutter speed possible given the lighting conditions and your specified ISO. This combination will usually result in a shallow depth-of-field and a blurred background. The longest lens that you can get your hands on is the best for these photos. Remember that this technique can also be used to take photos from behind your subject!

Three-quarter photos are usually of your subject as they are entering or exiting a corner. A successful three-quarter shot will contain a sharpness in the middle with blurred action or piece of track in front of, and behind, your subject. Given the variables of speed, location and angle of corners it is not possible to provide a specific shutter speed recommendation. The best method is to simply go out and try it and experiment with various settings. I would recommend a zoom lens such as a 70-200mm for this type of photo also as it allows for varying image cropping and location within a corner.

Most, but not all, venues will allow photographers to wander around the paddock area where the cars are prepared by their teams. This allows you to get close to your subject. Given this is the case a wide-angle lens will allow you to include more of a car within the frame or possibly some interior photos. I have started to use my Fuji S1 bridge camera with the fish-eye filter to achieve interesting perspectives.

Please note that the images accompanying this blog were taken without any media credentials.

John Larsen is this blog’s Senior International Travel Correspondent, whose website is www.photograffics.com.

No matter what kind of camera you use, photographing race cars on the track can be a challenge. The typical recipe mixes high ISO, fast shutter speed, and a long lens with a large aperture. Toss in a high frame-per-second continuous shooting mode and with a little practice you can make great-looking photographs of fast-moving cars. That’s the kind of advice that makes me crazy. You can photography anything you want using whatever gear you have as long as you’re aware of its capabilities and limitations.

You can always stake out a location and use a fast shutter speed and stop the car dead on the track, but that makes it look as if it were parked, not doing 160mph. So use the event’s practice time for you to practice panning. Keep both eyes open so you can see the car coming and frame the car before snapping the shutter. Follow the car until it’s where you want in the viewfinder, tripping the shutter as you continuously pan the camera. Don’t stop after you click the shutter! Follow through maintaining a smooth motion so the camera isn’t jerked at the end of the exposure to ruin the effect.

Some race photographers prefer to shoot panning shoots using manual focus. As you get more experienced you can lower the shutter speed to increase background blur and shooters that photograph drag races use shutter speeds as low as 1/15 sec or even slower to create “jiggle shake” that adds to the ground-shaking effects that Top Fuel Dragsters or Funny Cars produce.

Cars moving toward you are a different story and fast, accurate autofocus lets you capture sharp images on tracks, such as Laguna Seca’s aptly-named “Corkscrew,” where not only are the cars slowing for twists and turns but it provides a place where slow-moving cars are overtaken by faster ones, which provides opportunities for photographs involving more than one car.

For some of the other tight places on the track, I used high shutter speeds, such as 1/2000 sec to capture action that is obvious in the car’s position relative to one another. Whatever you do, use race practice to stake out these spots to find out where you want to be during race day. Some car shooters use manual focus in these places as well or select the main, center AF point, for autofocus, but I used the old fill-the-frame rule and let the camera take care of focusing.

Just a reminder: Podcast #3 is live now on my YouTube channel, Joe Farace’s Videos, featuring a look at the Leica Z2X and my experiences shooting 22-year old Agfa color film in a 40-year old Canon SLR, plus some information on where I get my ideas for blog posts!

I often get questions about photographing racecars and while almost all of those questions revolve around capturing action on the track, that’s only part of the deal with motorsports photography. The part we don’t often talk about has to do with some head-up safety advice when being around 200mph cars. Some of these suggestions may seem obvious to you but if you take my advice I’ll guarantee that it will result in your capturing better images because there won’t be any non-photographic distractions.

Park your vehicle in a designated parking spot in a designated parking lot. The last thing you need to hear when you’re getting ready to photograph a championship drag racing event is the race announcer calling “will the owner of the orange Gremlin, please move your car or it will be towed.”

When making photographs, remain behind safety barriers and while these barriers may not be set up everywhere around the track, especially on a sprawling road course, use your judgment when choosing a place to shoot the race. If you’re not sure about it, chances are a safety worker will shortly arrive asking you to move. If they do, be nice to them; they have a tough enough job without coping with whiny photographers.

It may or may not be hot at the track but it surely will be loud. Be sure to bring earplugs. Most tracks’ concession stands sell earplugs but why not bring your own. Make sure to keep several pair in your camera bag because they are easy to loose but inexpensive to replace. Offer any extras to a photog who may have forgotten theirs; make a friend.

While in the pit area be alert because there will be many scooters, 4-wheelers, motorcycles, or golf carts transporting people around. Be sure to pay attention to any cars that are getting ready to enter the staging area. Racecars don’t always have horns like the family jalopy but you should hear them coming even when wearing earplugs.

As with most professional sport facilities, you are only allowed to make video or still images of the vehicles for personal use and they may not be sold or marketed without having an arrangement from the speedway and/or the sanctioning body. Save yourself legal hassles but taking care of this when obtaining your track credentials. That doesn’t mean you can’t sell photographs to the teams or the racers at the track, which can help make you a few bucks.

If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to treat Joe to a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), click here. And if you do, many thanks.

Along with photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography that’s out-of-print but new copies are available for $21.50 or used copies starting around nine bucks—from Amazon, as I write this.

It’s #throwbackthursday and I’m reminiscing about the only time, I was able to photograph in that most hallowed of racing venues: The Indianapolis Motor Speedway—aka the Brickyard

One of the most important things to keep in mind when photographing cars, either a classic car or a race car, is choosing an interesting camera angle. To make your car photos stand out from the rest be sure to explore unconventional views of the car. Low or high angles not only provide a different perspective but minimize background clutter. Many pros use twenty-foot stepladders but even a short, two-step kitchen step stool will get you higher than eye level. Or maybe just climb a hill and use a long zoom.

It’s a good idea to try low angles and tilt the camera to provide a dynamic image. This approach will simplify the composition by eliminating distractions seen at eye level, which is the way many people shoot cars. Some of the best shots can be made when you’re lying on the ground pointing your camera at odd angles up at the car. Tip: Be sure to wear your grungies.

One of the disadvantages of using low camera angles and wide-angle lenses is that sometimes the wheels will not be round because of a combination of distortion at the edges of the lens and the camera angles used. If that’s the kind of thing that bothers you, you will need shoot with a view camera or buy/rent a pricey tilt-shift lens. Wheels that aren’t perfectly round don’t bother me.

How I Made this Photo: The image (at top) of a Ferrari practice pit stop was captured at the 2003 US Grand Prix at Indianapolis using an Olympus E-1 with an exposure of 1/640 sec at f/4.6 and ISO 400. At that time, I was a guest in the Ferrari suite which was just above their pit area. The windows sloped outwards, allowing me to hold the camera over my head and shoot down into the pit area and I made several shots of their practice stops. While not everybody has an opportunity to make this kind of image, I could have just sipped their wine and schmoozed but instead I grabbed at the chance to make some special images.

If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to treat Joe to a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), click here. And if you do, many thanks.

Along with photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography that’s available from Amazon for $21.50 with used copies starting around eight bucks., as I write this. No Kindle version is available, sorry.

It’s #throwbackthursday and today I’m reminiscing about the only time, I was able to photograph in that most hallowed of racing venues: The Indianapolis Motor Speedway—aka the Brickyard. The Indy 500 is synonymous with motorsport and while I have yet to see the 500 race in person, I was able to photograph the penultimate US Grand Prix at Indianapolis as a guest of Ferrari.

This is how I made my favorite image from that race. The photograph (above) of Michael Schumacher was made during practice (or qualifying, I don’t remember which, sorry) for the 2003 US Grand Prix. The image was captured with an Olympus E-1 and 55-200mm zoom lens, which has a 2X factor so it produced the equivalent angle-of-view of a 110-400mm lens. The camera’s ISO setting was 200 with an exposure of 1/1000 sec at f/5.6 at 1/1000th in Shutter Priority mode. I was standing on the roof of the one of the garages at Indy, which requires a special pass, that I was lucky enough to get since, at the time, Olympus was a sponsor of the Ferrari F1 team.

When I returned home from the race that Schumacher had won in the rain I found that I never got as a good of image of him actually winning. So I decided to create an impression of that win—ala LeRoy Neiman—in the digital darkroom.

I first applied the Photoshop’s Watercolor (Filter > Artistic > Watercolor) and then the Poster Edges (Filter > Artistic > Poster Edges) filter was used to give the image an artistic look. Then I applied the Motion Blur command ((Filter > Blur > Motion Blur) but instead of using the kind of blur that follows the direction of the car, I made it more vertical with a forward slant to provide a more impressionistic touch.

If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to treat Joe to a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), click here. And if you do, many thanks.

Along with photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography that’s available from Amazon for $21.50 with used copies starting around eight bucks., as I write this. No Kindle version is available, sorry.

The day (sometimes days) before a race is usually reserved for practice and there may be one or two sessions depending on the size of the event. NASCAR races usually have additional practice time they call “happy hour” but the purpose is the same—to allow competitors to fine tune the cars’ suspension setups to extract maximum performance.

You can use that time to practice as well, by working on techniques, checking lens selection and picking out places for around the track that will product dramatic action-filled shots, all of which will enhance your performance on race day too.

But don’t forget to photograph people too! Don’t just photograph beautiful cars; make photographs some of the people at the track too.

At some races, you may be able to get into the pits and photograph the drivers on practice day, with their cars. Many International car events have beautiful models on hand—although this trend seems to be not as popular as it once was—who are always glad to pose with the car for you.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the images of Ferrari fans (aka Tifosi) above was made in the parking lot of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on race day for the penultimate US Grand Prix using an Olympus E-1. For me this was a perfect place to use the camera’s Program mode along with the E-1’s built-in flash for fill.

Be sure to use fill flash when photographing people at the track. I used a Canon EX 550 flash for the photographs of the two Team Audi drivers ( right) in the pits after American LeMans Series practice at Mazda Speedway at Laguna Seca. The camera used was a Canon EOS 1Ds with 28-135mm lens with an exposure of 1/60 sec at f/4 and ISO 200

If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to treat Joe to a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), click here. And if you do, many thanks.

Along with photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography that’s available from Amazon for $21.50 with used copies starting around eight bucks., as I write this. No Kindle version is available, sorry.

Photographing race cars can be a challenge no matter what kind of camera you use. Most people think that all they need are high ISO’s, fast shutter speed and a long lens with a large aperture aka “big glass.” Toss in a high frame-per-second continuous shooting mode and with a little practice you too can make great-looking photographs of fast-moving cars. Maybe, maybe not. That’s the kind of advice that makes me crazy. My feelings are that you can photography anything you want using whatever gear you have as long as you’re aware of its capabilities and limitations.

You can always stake out a location, use a fast shutter speed and stop the car—dead—on the track, but that makes it look as if it were parked, not doing 160mph. So use the race car’s practice times to practice your  panning skills. Keep both eyes open so you can see the car coming and frame the car before snapping the shutter. Follow the car with your camera until it’s where you want in the viewfinder, tripping the shutter as you continuously pan the camera. Don’t stop panning until after you click the shutter! Follow through maintaining a smooth motion so the camera isn’t jerked at the end of the exposure to ruin the effect. Some race photographers prefer to shoot panning shoots using manual focus. (I wish I could,) As you get more experienced you can lower the shutter speed to increase background blur and shooters that photograph drag races use shutter speeds as low as 1/15 sec or even slower to create “jiggle shake” that adds to the ground-shaking effects that Top Fuel Dragsters or Funny Cars produce.

Cars moving toward you are a different story and fast, accurate autofocus lets you capture sharp images on tracks, such as  Laguna Seca’s aptly-named “Corkscrew,” where not only are the cars slowing for twists and turns but it provides a place where slow-moving cars can be overtaken by faster ones, which it turn provides opportunities for you to make photographs involving more than one car.

For some of the other tight places on the track, I use high shutter speeds, such as 1/2000 sec to capture action that is obvious in the car’s position relative to one another.

Whatever you do, use practice time to stake out these spots to find out where you want to be during race day. Some car shooters use manual focus in these places as well or select the main, center AF point, for autofocus, but I used the old fill-the-frame rule and let the camera take care of autofocusing.

If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to treat Joe to a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), click here. And if you do, many thanks.

Along with photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography is available from Amazon for $21.50 and used copies starting at around eight bucks as I write this.

“Whenever I see something that challenges me, I take it on.”—Niki Lauda

The 1972 United States Grand Prix was held on October 8, 1972 at the Grand Prix race course in Watkins Glen, New York and I was there. Jackie Stewart, having just lost his World Champion’s crown to Emerson Fittipaldi, dominated the entire weekend with pole, fastest lap and win completing a sweep of the North American races. It was the twenty-second victory of the Scot’s career and his fourth in 1972.

How I made this shot: My photograph of Niki Lauda (above) who did not even finish the event, was originally captured on Ektachrome color slide film using a Nikon F camera; lens and exposure unrecorded. To make the photograph I used an old technique for photographing cars and other stuff in motion called panning.

Tip: You can always stake out a location around the track and use a fast shutter speed to stop the car—dead—on the track but that makes it look as if it were parked, instead of doing 150mph. Instead, use the race team’s practice times to practice your panning technique: Keep both eyes open so you can see the car coming and frame the car before snapping the shutter. Follow the car until it’s where you want in the viewfinder, tripping the shutter as you continuously pan the camera. Don’t stop moving the camera after you click the shutter! Follow through maintaining a smooth motion so the camera isn’t jerked at the end of the exposure and the effect is ruined by camera motion blur.

The above photograph was scanned by ScanMyPhotos who offers a wonderfully seamless process for digitizing all of images that have been laying dormant for many years and helps bring them back to life.

If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to buy Joe a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.75, Starbucks has raised the price of Earl Grey), click here. And if you do, thank so very much.

Every year on April First, many blog writers decide to become humorists and post what they think are whimsical musings. Not here. Although I’ll occasionally go on a rant, I try to keep this blog’s focus on practical photographic advice, as in today’s post.

I’ve been wearing photo vests for more than thirty-five years and over time have watched them evolve from just a convenient way to have a few extra pockets for storing gear into wearable camera bags.

Camera bags may be luggage but vests are also fashion and style is just one of the many different factors in choosing what photo vest is the right one for you. Here are a few more:

• Functionality: What kind of photography do you do? And how much gear do you need to carry. Pockets? You’re going to need lots of them.
• Fit: How well does the vest fit? Is it tailored to size or are there adjustment belts or tabs on the side? Some vests, like those from ScotteVest, are available in sizes from Small to XXX Large Tall.
• Construction: Is it well made? Are there buttons, zippers, Velcro? Which are the easiest for you to use in a given photographic situation, which is a motorsports situation can sometime become quite hectic.
• Style: While I am far from being a fashionista. you don’t have to be Ralph Lauren to know that different photographers need different styles and types of vests.
• Price: This last factor should matter the least, since a realy well-made vest will last a long time and the price will be quickly amortized over a number of assignments or even personal projects you shoot while wearing it.

The Q.U.E.S.T. Vest that I’ve been wearing—mine is the understated black—is packed with more features and 42 pockets. It will hold lots of photo gear and has a zippered compartment in the collar to stow the hood along with a giant back pocket to stash larger items. The Q.U.E.S.T. Vest is also available for women

The vest is made from 65% cotton and 35% nylon fabric making it suitable for temperate weather, comfortable enough to be worn indoors and can be layered with other garments for cooler temperatures like we get here in Colorado, even this time of year. (It’s a chilly and snow day when I’m writing this on Tuesday) The vest is treated with Teflon for water and stain resistance.

All those pockets will come in handy for shooting motorsports,  because carrying a large lens and monopod doesn’t leave room for schlepping a camera bag. And sonofagun the Q.U.E.S.T. Vest looks nice too, unlike the fisherman’s vest styling of others I’ve tried over the years.

If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to buy Joe a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), click here. And if you do, thank so very much.