Well, this being the photography based version of this page (I might do another one that's actually about the race later) I'm going to take this chance to tell you all about the pictures I took here, and even the ones at the bottom which my mom actually took. (Hi mom!) After all, I can't drive and take pictures of my car at the same time.
This was the first time I had actually taken still photography of moving cars before, and certainly the first time I'd done real race photography. I worked for a race photographer way back around '91 or so, but I basically just sold the pictures to the racers when he was taking pictures out at the track. Thus, I have basically zero experience in taking action photos.
I do however have a rather large stack of Car and Driver magazines
which I've always admired for a lot of their photography. Cars are a
very special thing to take pictures of in motion because when you take
a still picture of a moving car, doing it wrong will make this very
fast car look like it's just standing still. Not very exciting.
Now getting to that red Integra. I actually did a pretty good job of getting an action shot of the car here. This one makes use of a head-on viewpoint in mid-corner so you can tell what's going on. Because the wheels are cranked hard to the right (the driver's right) the whole body is leaning to the outside of the turn.
Looking even closer, we can also see a little bit of light shining through the inside front wheel. Look at the driver and you can see his hand high on the wheel and that he's looking and leaning at where he plans to have the car at the exit of the turn. Overall, it gives you a good idea of what the car and the driver are doing, and you can even tell where the course is going by the dark path in the pavement.
This photo of the blue Miata turned out pretty well, but not the way
that I would really like it to look. Why? You don't get as much of
a sensation of speed with this picture. You can see that the car is
nicely between the cones, so it's apparent that he's actually
on-course, but not much more than that can be seen in this picture.
It is still a good photograph because of the other elements working well. One of the tricks of the trade is to show extra track at the end of the picture where the car is headed. This gives the viewer more of a psychological feeling of motion because the off center image has the implication that the vehicle must be going somewhere. That works well in this picture.
Also, the driver is looking right at the camera. Since we can pretty well guess that I'm not part of the track, we know he's not looking for the next turn, but it draws attention to the driver to see him actually looking at the camera. This is the kind of picture that the driver would like, but it's not quite as exciting for anyone who doesn't know this person.
Here we have another picture of that red Integra again. What I was
really trying for in a lot of these was to have some nice motion blur
so that you could see the wheels spinning and the car would look
relatively static. I've seen lots of pictures like this in the good
car magazines, and now I know first hand that it's a LOT harder than
it looks.
This was using a 1/250 frame capture at most, but was likely actually taken with a 1/125 second exposure. The problem is, I wasn't manually setting the frame speed, I was just setting the aperture such that the light meter would show 1/125 or so. This was something of a mistake apparently since we can see virtually no motion blur at all. It's very slight if you look closely, but I was really going for that exaggerated effect you see in the magazines. Still, not too bad for a first try. I just need to get a good Nikon that does all my thinking for me next.
Here we have what is one of the most photogenic cars on the track.
That's right, it's a Dodge Viper GTS. Large and cartoonish in it's
dimensions, there's not a boring angle to look at this car from, which
makes it great for photographs. It also goes real fast, which makes
it a good subject when the idea is to have motion blur in the photos.
Unfortunately, as I said above, I wasn't setting my camera up right for doing motion stuff, which is extremely sensitive to the shutter speed. With all my other stuff, the difference between 1/250 and 1/60 didn't matter for much of anything except in terms of if my hands were shaking enough to slightly blur the picture if I was doing 1/60. Also, I'm normally more concerned with things like depth of field when doing my scenery photography anyway, so I just wasn't thinking of how important shutter speed is.
The point is, even though this is a very dynamic photo, it's totally frozen, and the car is far enough away and at such an angle that you can hardly even tell that there's a driver in the car, much less can you tell what he's doing. Adding to this is the fact that this was a high speed corner, so you don't see the exaggerated turning of the front wheels, nor do you see huge body lean, since Vipers don't lean.
It's got that nice effect with having open track out in front of the car, but still, it's too easy to imagine that this car is actually stalled out, just parked on the track rather than actually racing on the edge of adhesion around this wild multi-radius sweeping turn.
Ok, ok, so this one's not even close to looking like it's in motion.
Fact is, I think the car was just about parked, or going about 5mph
when I got this picture. If you're wondering, it's actually just the
exiting row just past the finish line. I include it because it's just
a pretty cool car to look at, even though the picture's not much to
speak of.
Poor lighting meant that I was basically taking a picture of the car's shaded side. This means either getting a light reading which will make all the surroundings look normal and the car look very dark, or else I get the car's profile to look nice and all the surroundings wind up washed out. This particular photo's a little of both. Oh well. Maybe I can wish for better lighting at the next race too.
One of the other good looking cars on the track was this yellow '93
RX-7 turbo. Here was another one of my attempts at getting a good
profile with motion blur. Obviously, not much blurred. It probably
detected so much extra brightness from the nearly glowing paint that
it kicked the shutter speed up to the next notch, being 1/250.
So, any chance of getting motion blur was pretty well lost, but the
good news is that the photo did turn out well otherwise. Because the
paint is so bright, it really made up for the fact that there was low
light on this side of the cars.
This here is a Triumph Spitfire crossing the finish line. I got the
focus and all set out ok, and I had a slow enough shutter speed that
I actually got motion blur, but unfortunately, that just didn't work
so great from this angle. It wound up with most of the picture looking
nice and fairly sharp, but the car's kind of blurred in a way that
doesn't make it readily apparent what direction he's going or how
fast or anything.
Still, I kind of like this photo, maybe just for how nice I think the old car looks, all done up for racing. Steve Firra here driving the 75 Triumph Spitfire took 3rd place in raw times, and 2nd overall in corrected (PAX) times. That's pretty good, especially since according to the newsletter, this is a brand new car for him. Possibly at one of the races in the spring I'll be able to get more pictures of this very nice car.
This here is not only the overall quickest car for the day, but also
probably my favorite picture of the bunch. This blindingly quick
Honda CRX not only looks fast, but it goes fast. What I really like
about this particular picture is that I finally got most of what I
was trying to do to work on this picture. It was reasonably centered,
the view was unobstructed, and it really gives a sensation of speed.
The scanned version of this picture really doesn't look as good as the real print copy that I have here, but you can still sort of see some of the details. The first thing that really struck me was how sharply in focus the car is. But I not only got the car in focus, but I was tracking with just the right speed to keep it looking sharp, and get that all so illusive motion blur that I'd been wanting. It's very minimal on this picture, but again, more pronounced in the actual print copy. I'll hopefully be getting a new (better) scanner in March or April.
You can not only pick up on the slight motion blur of the surroundings, but also in the slight blurring of the wheels. I'm going to have to re-scan this as soon as I get my new equipment to make this better illustrated. Also instantly visible is the driver working away at the wheel of the car. You can tell that he's looking intently down the track and is getting his arms around that wheel to bring the little CRX around the turn. A very cool little car.
This VW Golf GTI is one that I'm going to get to practice this
particular shot on. The GTI, on race tires, will actually generate
enough cornering force on the outside of the car to lift the inside
rear wheel in braking. Seeing a car up on three wheels is pretty much
like the ultimate sign of pushing a vehicle to it's limits without
going into a wild spin.
The time spent up on three wheels is very limited though, and you really need to be at a good angle for it to be well illustrated that the car is in fact up on three wheels. Low camera angles are good for this, and plus I would have wanted to get the picture a little earlier than I did here. You may not want to believe me on this, but the little GTI is actually up on three wheels in this picture. The problem is, I waited a fraction of a second too long and you can barely see the rear wheel from this angle. Hopefully in February or whenever the next Phoenix race is, I'll be able to get some good pictures of either this or a Dodge Neon that also can get up on three wheels.
And so finally we're brought to my Honda Civic out there on the track!
That's right, I'm actually out there trying to act competitive running
against lots of much faster cars in the Novice class. Unfortunately
for me, as I would later find out, I would have been much better off
just running in HS Open than in the novice class, but that's a story
for a different day.
This is a good picture, if a little distant, of my Civic bending into a nice sweeping right hand turn. You can tell I'm looking ahead at where I want to plan to apex, and just how much traction I can summon from my old, bald, squealing little Firestone doughnuts. I actually did pretty OK out there, but if you're reading this and have not heard how I did at the next race, lets just say that getting the new set of tires made a HUGE improvement in my times. Either that or I and my car were much happier with the higher speed course, but the event after this one was a lot better one for my Honda. Can we say: "Best time in class"?
Well, getting back to the actual photographic elements of this picture, at this event where I placed 3rd out of 9 entries in Novice. The car is pretty much heading for the camera, making this a real aggressive shot, yet you can still see enough of the side of the car to see where the suspension is planted, and that I am definitely going for it out there. It's a whole lot of fun, and I would suggest that anyone with a car try an autocross at least once. You'll learn a lot about how your car really handles at the low speed (25-40mph) limits that would be most likely encountered in street traffic emergencies.
This was about the best picture of my car, in my humble opinion, from
the set. It's about the same place as where I got the CRX shot, but
this one's slightly later. As such, the lighting created a lot of
glare, but that almost creates a cool outline effect of my car going
around the turn. You can see the cones up close that I'm going through,
and if you look under my car, right around the middle, you can see the
cones on the other side. Makes it look like I'm just barely squeaking
through a tiny space! In fact, I believe the cones are spaced at about
12 feet, but that's still not exactly a giant distance.
I like also the fact that I had a white and black striped shirt so that even with the highly backlit conditions, you can see that I'm clearly getting my arms involved in the act of getting the steering wheel to make me point the right way.
Well, that's about it. It took me two weeks to get this page finished,
and in that time, I've actually completed another autocross! No still
photos from that one, instead I got some video of the event. So if I
ever get a video capture card (like, on my new computer this spring) I
should be able to post up a video of my class winning run to the
web page. Stay tuned!
Page Created: 12-6-98
All pictures and text Copyright 1998 Brandon Smith.
Commercial reproduction without express written consent of the author is prohibited.
Back to Autocrossing.com