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Morgoth's avatar

You don't get white-pills from me very often but when I do dish them out they're large and sweet.

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DW's avatar

Ahh this one really speaks to me, thanks for that!

I've been taking motorsport photographs for nearly forty years, began when I was about 12. There are a lot of differences between what I do and what a wildlife photographer does but there are many commonalities. At my local track I know exactly where I want to be on any given corner, to within about six inches, to get the photos I want. It has taken years to refine this down, and for someone else with a different eye they may well think that somewhere further around is better for them, or over on the other side, it's hugely subjective.

The satisfaction is immense, I can take easily 1000 photographs in a day but there are only ever truly a handful that I'm totally happy with, and only two or three in a season (which is 20,000 pics!) that I'm genuinely proud of. I might perfectly capture the expression on the driver's face, a wheel lifting off the ground entering a corner under braking, the thousandth of a second that car doing 80+mph flashes through a gap in the branches of a huge old tree, the moment a crucial component lets go and flies through the air, or any number of things. There's a continual drive for the perfect dynamic angle, a slow enough shutter speed to give the picture motion without being blurred, or a composition with the right combination of cars in the fore and background to really make it pop. A lot of it is kind of a waiting game, will a particular driver nail his line perfectly next time round? If not then where will he be and how can I be ready? How many laps are left for me to capture one particular car and the one a split second behind it?

"So something else drives these people. It doesn’t seem to be any financial gain, and it isn’t comfort, so why bother doing it all unless there is a glimpse of something more profound?"

I've often asked myself why I do it, I mean I love old cars and motorsports but why do I have to get so deep in to photographing it when I should really be enjoying the moment in full rather than squinting through a viewfinder with back and neck ache from the weight of the lens? For me, the answer is kind of simple - I have to do it because I'm fortunate enough to have the knowledge, equipment and ability _to_ do it. More often than not I'm the only person in the vicinity with a "proper" camera. If I don't capture these moments, who else will? If, say, that rare exotic bird only appears once a year but nobody is there to capture the moment then the beauty goes unseen. Who will see the focus and determination in the eyes of a driver giving his machine absolutely everything it can give in a particular moment if I don't snap my shutter at the precise 100th of a second?

It's also a completely in-the-zone thing, all the weight of the modern world disappears in the tyre squeal and exhaust noise. My phone goes unchecked for hours as I stand, absorbed in the scene in front of me, click click clicking away.

Quite a ramble! But the first time I've written some of these things out, it's good to see my thoughts fleshed out in front of me.

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