POTD 24 May 2015 - John Player Special

[Mike Farley]

This post has been a long time in gestation and dates back to the Historic Vehicles Meeting held at Brands Hatch at the end of May. One of the reasons for the delay in posting is that although I thought getting shots would be easy*, getting shots which I like was not. It was the first time I had ever been to a motor race meeting, so there was a lot to take in and while I enjoyed the experience, I am not sure that I have managed to capture the essence of what was going on during the day. As a historic vehicles day, for authencity some of the decals on this car hark back to an earlier era; there was another car there which dated back to the era when Penthouse magazine also sponsored motor racing.

John Player Special-2.jpg (120.99 KiB) Viewed 1048 times

* By and large it was. Set the camera to continuous AF, high speed shooting, ensure that the shutter speed is not too low and keep the vehicle in the frame (much less easy!) and at least some of the shots will be sharp.

[Paul Heester]

I agree with your sentiments

although I thought getting shots would be easy*, getting shots which I like was not.

I too went to Brands Hatch 2 years ago and felt I didnt really capture the speed and excitement of racing. However, your image is pin sharp with background blur and no distractions so you were defintely doing something right

[Mike Farley]

Thanks for the comments, Paul. This is typical of a number of shots I got during the day, but without being a racing afficionado there is nothing which really makes one stand out from another.

I did try getting images which showed more than one car in order to convey some drama, but that is really difficult and involves a degree of luck as well as skill. Often the cars would overlap or were too small in the frame if I tried to include the surroundings.