„Well, there’s a challenge.. finding pictures for a drift edition of photo friday.. “
That was my initial ironic reaction on seeing this weeks theme.. but then it dawned on me that actually it was gonna be quite hard to pick any driftphotos with some kind of meaning, as I generally look to post something with at least a little bit of relevance to a certain topic, not just random pics. After pondering a few options I came up with the following idea: I want to try and post as many fundamentaly different drift shots as possible. And I’m not talking about the colors of the cars either..
Well, as a photographer you often face choices which are hard to make beforehand and easy to regret later. Generally, the car doing a triple flip happens in the spot where you’ve been a few minutes earlier (no, that exact thing hasn’t actually happened to me, thank god..), so that would be the first choice. The second one is whether to do what I like to call „high risk or low risk photography“, the main parameter of which would be the exposure you use. But the aspect I really wanna concentrate on here is whether you try and get as many different angles and therefore photos as possible or if you want to find a few favourite spots and get a lot of good shots from there. I personally tend to lean toward the latter option, as I’m more of a perfectionist than an infinitely creative person (probably why I spend my „real life“ calculating stuff 😉 ). Although that leads to fewer of those fundamentaly different shots I will still try and find a decent selection from this year’s, no wait, LAST year’s events to give an overview (..and this is actually real time now, as I haven’t selected the photos as I’m writing this 🙂 ).
Let’s start with my favourite, the opposite door pic. To get it, you have to stand on the inside of the exit of a corner and try and get the outside door in the picture. The main challenge will be to shoot at decent exposures because paning is more difficult when the car is coming towards you.
Yves Faber always gives you good opportunities for exciting opposite door pics with lots of angle and smoke
probably about as much opposite door as you can get without the car spinning, a hungarian E30 coming up Schumacher-S at about 150km/h
slow corners make for less angle and smoke, which can of course be compensated for by dead cool expressions of the drivers!
naturally, it will make for an even better pic if you happen to catch the death of a tire..
..or if the car’s just so damn sexy that you can’t stop looking at it!
Ok, those were a lot for one category.. but as I said it’s my favourite shot.. So to continue, the classic inside pan. Easiest to do when wo find the centre point of the curve, from where the car will be the exact same distance for the duration of the pan, this shot makes the longest exposures possible.
an AMG Mercedes at Auxburg, where I had the EOS 7D for the first time and did a lot of long exposure experiments
Michu Sahli at one of our Anneau du Rhin trackdays
The counterpart of the inside pan would be the outside pan, being a bit more difficult, cause the distance to the car isn’t constant.
Juha Rintanen through the Schumacher-S
one nice effect you get with a long exposure outside pan is the smoke pouring out of the rear wheelarch, as demonstrated by Declan Hicks
..if there is any smoke 😉
The one face of the car left would of course be the rear.. (except if you got a helicopter.. 😉 ). So basically there’s the simple rear shot, which can only be done with cars/in spots where there is almost no smoke:
Andy Distel’s Soarer politely enough stopped producing smoke for a second to allow me to see him
One particular possibility with rear shots is the opportunity to catch flames, made easier here by an angry RB26-engined MPS S13 spitting them for seconds at a time, incidentally showing good examples of both the inside door and outside door rear shot.. 🙂
What I also like to do with a rear shot is to zoom out a bit and show the exit of the turn, creating a nice feeling of space with the car drifting towards it, as shown here by two of our team cars:
A more specific shot would be the one where you want to show a specific detail, like a car getting particularly close to a clipping point.. actually, let’s just call it a clipping point shot. Can also be done with walls, but unfortunately I haven’t yet had the opportunity to do that..
Florian Zimmermann delivering Swiss precision
One more kind of shot that I’d like to single out is the move farther away from the action and panning from there, resulting in an own kind of look, inside or outside:
Reidar Andresen at the Nurburgring
Andy’s Soarer aka „Die Rauchdistel“
Variations would be to shoot it through a fence or tree
Patrick Ritzmann in his 2JZ-engined BMW
or to tell two drifters to battle like cray! 🙂
Oli Harsch and Fredrik Oksnevad
The final kind of shot is when the $hit hits the fan and something goes wrong. This might not be the favourite moments a driver wants to remember, but the resulting shots are most often the ones that everyone looks at. So to be completely honest, we photographers.. well.. you all just keep drifting at the limits, let’s leave it at that.. 😉
well.. that’s it for this weeks edition of „how to write half a book when all you’re supposed to do is post a few pictures“.. please comment if you found my ramblings interesting or boring, informative or superfluos.. and of course if you can think of another drift shot, tell me and I’ll deliver it in 2011!
have a nice weekend everyone!„Well, there’s a challenge.. finding pictures for a drift edition of photo friday.. “
That was my initial ironic reaction on seeing this weeks theme.. but then it dawned on me that actually it was gonna be quite hard to pick any driftphotos with some kind of meaning, as I generally look to post something with at least a little bit of relevance to a certain topic, not just random pics. After pondering a few options I came up with the following idea: I want to try and post as many fundamentaly different drift shots as possible. And I’m not talking about the colors of the cars either..
Well, as a photographer you often face choices which are hard to make beforehand and easy to regret later. Generally, the car doing a triple flip happens in the spot where you’ve been a few minutes earlier (no, that exact thing hasn’t actually happened to me, thank god..), so that would be the first choice. The second one is whether to do what I like to call „high risk or low risk photography“, the main parameter of which would be the exposure you use. But the aspect I really wanna concentrate on here is whether you try and get as many different angles and therefore photos as possible or if you want to find a few favourite spots and get a lot of good shots from there. I personally tend to lean toward the latter option, as I’m more of a perfectionist than an infinitely creative person (probably why I spend my „real life“ calculating stuff 😉 ). Although that leads to fewer of those fundamentaly different shots I will still try and find a decent selection from this year’s, no wait, LAST year’s events to give an overview (..and this is actually real time now, as I haven’t selected the photos as I’m writing this 🙂 ).
Let’s start with my favourite, the opposite door pic. To get it, you have to stand on the inside of the exit of a corner and try and get the outside door in the picture. The main challenge will be to shoot at decent exposures because paning is more difficult when the car is coming towards you.
Yves Faber always gives you good opportunities for exciting opposite door pics with lots of angle and smoke
probably about as much opposite door as you can get without the car spinning, a hungarian E30 coming up Schumacher-S at about 150km/h
slow corners make for less angle and smoke, which can of course be compensated for by dead cool expressions of the drivers!
naturally, it will make for an even better pic if you happen to catch the death of a tire..
..or if the car’s just so damn sexy that you can’t stop looking at it!
Ok, those were a lot for one category.. but as I said it’s my favourite shot.. So to continue, the classic inside pan. Easiest to do when wo find the centre point of the curve, from where the car will be the exact same distance for the duration of the pan, this shot makes the longest exposures possible.
an AMG Mercedes at Auxburg, where I had the EOS 7D for the first time and did a lot of long exposure experiments
Michu Sahli at one of our Anneau du Rhin trackdays
The counterpart of the inside pan would be the outside pan, being a bit more difficult, cause the distance to the car isn’t constant.
Juha Rintanen through the Schumacher-S
one nice effect you get with a long exposure outside pan is the smoke pouring out of the rear wheelarch, as demonstrated by Declan Hicks
..if there is any smoke 😉
The one face of the car left would of course be the rear.. (except if you got a helicopter.. 😉 ). So basically there’s the simple rear shot, which can only be done with cars/in spots where there is almost no smoke:
Andy Distel’s Soarer politely enough stopped producing smoke for a second to allow me to see him
One particular possibility with rear shots is the opportunity to catch flames, made easier here by an angry RB26-engined MPS S13 spitting them for seconds at a time, incidentally showing good examples of both the inside door and outside door rear shot.. 🙂
What I also like to do with a rear shot is to zoom out a bit and show the exit of the turn, creating a nice feeling of space with the car drifting towards it, as shown here by two of our team cars:
A more specific shot would be the one where you want to show a specific detail, like a car getting particularly close to a clipping point.. actually, let’s just call it a clipping point shot. Can also be done with walls, but unfortunately I haven’t yet had the opportunity to do that..
Florian Zimmermann delivering Swiss precision
One more kind of shot that I’d like to single out is the move farther away from the action and panning from there, resulting in an own kind of look, inside or outside:
Reidar Andresen at the Nurburgring
Andy’s Soarer aka „Die Rauchdistel“
Variations would be to shoot it through a fence or tree
Patrick Ritzmann in his 2JZ-engined BMW
or to tell two drifters to battle like cray! 🙂
Oli Harsch and Fredrik Oksnevad
The final kind of shot is when the $hit hits the fan and something goes wrong. This might not be the favourite moments a driver wants to remember, but the resulting shots are most often the ones that everyone looks at. So to be completely honest, we photographers.. well.. you all just keep drifting at the limits, let’s leave it at that.. 😉
well.. that’s it for this weeks edition of „how to write half a book when all you’re supposed to do is post a few pictures“.. please comment if you found my ramblings interesting or boring, informative or superfluos.. and of course if you can think of another drift shot, tell me and I’ll deliver it in 2011!
have a nice weekend everyone!