If you’ve been following my motorsport photography journey for any time, you’ll likely know that I’m a bit of a Darren Heath fanboy. While I reckon I’m reasonable at taking pictures of cars or motorcycles on track, I’m still working up to a point where I can photograph the event and get across the feeling of racing rather than just the hardware. Darren really gets this. His photos are so much more creative than pretty much any other F1 photographer’s I’ve seen and they convey the atmosphere of the event absolutely beautifully. To see what I mean, take a look at https://www.darrenheath.com/2017/2017-united-states-grand-prix which contains his gallery of images from last Sunday’s race.
So why do I mention Darren Heath alongside this picture? One thing that stands out for me in his photography is the amount of into-to-light shooting he does. A couple of US Grand Prix ago, I was driving photo shuttles and took a group including Darren out prior to a morning practice session. As is usual, everyone on the van jumped out at turn 10 to shoot the cars front-lit with the iconic Circuit of the Americas tower in the background. Darren, however, stayed on the van until turn 20 and, facing the sun, shot some amazing low key images of the rears of the cars accelerating past the main grandstand.
This picture, shot into the sun at turn 14 during last Sunday’s race, shows Max Verstappen of Red Bull Racing. Max, the youngest driver on the grid, has a huge fan following all of whom were disappointed when, after making a daring pass on the final lap to gain third place and a podium spot, he was awarded a time penalty and pushed back to 4th.
While singing the praises of other F1 photographers, someone else you should check out is Kurt Bradley who shoots for, among other people, Jalopnik. Kurt is an Austin-based photographer and his recent galleries of racing at CoTA are outstanding. You can find his pictures from last week’s fun at https://blackflag.jalopnik.com/heres-your-massive-austin-f1-race-photo-gallery-1819764293.
For the technically inclined...