Last bank holiday weekend saw the second round of the MSA Drag Racing series head to Shakespeare Country Raceway. This was the first time out to the quarter mile for me this season.
I’ve spent most of the off season shooting news and feature work which although interesting just doesn’t have the same buzz as working a weekend at the track.
The weekend started hot and sunny which is always a bonus. Clouds where about perfect big and fluffy and just enough to look pretty but not busy. Personaly theres nothing worse than turning up to the track and being greeted by big flat sky’s this limits your options to shoot wide to pretty much non as it creates a flat dull photo, really not cool !
Priority number one for Saterday was to get back into the swing of things as its been a good 8 months since I’ve shot Drag Racing.
Priority number two was to get decent stock images of as much of the field as i could as it was touch and go how much good weather we would have.
One major battle at the drag strip is trying to find a decent background made even more tricky by the position of the sun. At Shakespeare Country it starts behind the stands then swings round the back of the track and end up behind the wall in the other lane. Really limits you on the angles you can shoot
Before we go any further I would just like to have a rant about bikers. Bikes are great always fun to watch and photograph but could you all please put numbers on the nose of the bikes. It means that when Im sat at home looking at pictures of bikes I can work out who is who and caption them correctly. If I cant caption them I cant distribute you which means no magazine coverage. Ok rant over back to the pics.
next up i believe is the young gun Jemma Venables who certainly knows how to ride that bike and is going to be a force to be delt with very soon.
next up is my favorite photo from the weekend and it has a story to go with it to boot ! Nigel Payne Launches away from the line and powers down the quarter mile black top to set a pair of records both a speed for a Super Modified at 183.13 mph and a Super Modified ET: 7.529 seconds.
Chris Hartnel always lifts the wheels comming of the line which is great the problem is he is always up too early to get a clean angle to be able to shoot wide. This leaves you with two choices, that of shooting wide and just putting up with the crap or shooting tight head on and keeping it clean. Felt like something a bit different to the normal full car in shot head on picture so I held out and got a nice close up, something a bit different from the norm is what we like.
Later on in the day the clouds rolled in and gave a intresting texture to the sky, I kept shooting wide but not sure if I’m keen on the stormy clouds, it may work better with something burning nitro.
Mark Flavell in his Super Pro Funny car is always great to shoot and the colors really contrast against a blue sky
NFAA’s were entertaining as always however the last session on sunday night almost endded in disaster as John Wright in the Chaos car almost put his ride back in the wall at the same point where it endded up last year. Thankfully John was able to catch it this time with mear Inches to go before making contact with the barrier.
At the very core of Modernpics is the award winning photographer Dom Romney. To find out more about Dom Please check out his editorial photography. To find out more about what modern pics has to offer follow the link bellow!
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