Try not to miss the shot…

Try not to miss shots… like this guy did today at the track.

I’m currently shooting the Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series – this is the second of four times I’ll be shooting this series. We’re currently racing at Lake Elsinore, Calif. Last time I covered this event was the season opener in Primm, Nev.

This track is intense! Short course is definitely exciting, and when you have extremely powerful trucks – and some slightly wild drivers – anything can happen.

I have nearly the entire series of this accident… Unforunately, from a photographic standpoint, I was at a poor location for many of the accidents today. Most where on turn four – I was shooting at turn five.
But at least I’m not that guy on the hill who, while is the best possible location, was looking the completely wrong direction.

I was, however, in the perfect location for when Robby Woods rolled his truck. He was actually the first rolling of the day (there were a total of six that I counted).
Sadly, for me, I was checking exposure levels while getting my setting dialed in for the day… Again, this was like the second lap of the morning… I was one of the few photographers out on the track at that point. Robby immediately climbed out, threw a thumbs up, and once they rolled his truck back over he climbed in and kept going.

I actually really love this shot of Alan Pflueger I took today. Alan, in addition to being a really great guy, is an incredible driver… Many of you probably already know who he is, so I won’t go into that.
I took this shot though because I wanted to see at what point I could hand-hold at longer focal lengths with very low shutter speeds for a lot of motion blur.

This is a handheld shot, pretty much straight out of camera, at 1/80 of a second at 130mm. ISO 200
Admit it, you’re impressed. Haha.

I have two more days of racing to cover. I’m actually looking forward to putting my 5D Mark II that I use in the studio to the test out in the field. And I’m sure the video will be pretty bitchin’ if I decide to test that out too.
But ultimately I’m looking forward to being able to experiment a bit with my photography since I got pretty much all the shots I needed today..

Check back this weekend for further updates. And you can follow me on Twitter (@johnremus) to keep up with me on the racetrack.

Night all!