So. How do you take pictures of race cars?
Udate: 02/25/2009 - It's been a while, but I still got it!
I've taken hundreds of thousands of photographs. In any given summer I've topped out at 40,000 images. That's just doing it every Saturday night!
I've recently finished reading a book called Outliers: The Story of Success. I've read several books by Malcolm Gladwell and I have to say that his perspective is unique and in many cases obvious. People wonder all the time what makes a successful football player, musician, race car driver or photographer and I have to say that Malcolm has it nailed: Time.
The average person can become extraordinary through one single trait: practice. Did you know that the Beatles were playing some dive bar in Europe long before they hit the US. Everyone called them an overnight sensation here, which is true, but they were already seasoned pros long before they hit our shores. The same can be said about great photographers.
Having a "good eye" only goes so far. It's like having a great ear for music and not knowing how to play an instrument! Photographers have to practice. With today's technology, it makes it cheaper than ever to blast off photographs by the hundreds allowing the photographer to analyze how each picture is affected by the miriad of settings available on today's cameras. But even if you don't have a super dooper camera, you can still practice composition.
Ask anyone who has taken 40,000+ photographs in any given time frame and they'll tell you they have no clue why they can capture every moment in such an elegant way. Watch your track photographer some time. If he's not watching the action like a hawk, he'll miss some small detail, a bump on the track, a little boy or girl sleeping in the stands a skirmish in the pits. No matter what the action - and it's not always the race - there's plenty of content to uncover during a Saturday afternoon. Especially if the guy clicking off the photos LOVES what he does. Then you've got the best of the best. A well practiced, gifted person who enjoys interacting with his surroundings through his camera. That's how you get a good shot.
Kevin 
|
