Yesterday was Day 2 of the Lucas Oil Off Road Race Series event at Lake Elsinore. This time around the racing was all at night – with made for some tricky lighting, but also some bitchin’ shots.
From my location on the track, around turn 5, I noticed pretty quickly that some of the trucks were backfiring pretty bad. And after getting a pretty cool flame shot during the Long Beach Grand Prix, I decided I wanted a night-backfire-shot from off road, too. It was only another two laps or so before I nailed this one; the image itself is a bit grainy… but it’s shot with only available light – I don’t have Alien Bees to set up on the track and risk them getting run over.

The racing actually started in the evening, at dusk. Here’s what shots were lookin’ like before the sun went away completely. Not terrible, but not amazing either. I think I miiiiight actually bring some of my 580EXII’s and Pocket Wizards out to the track tonight and play with some lighting at sunset… maybe… that’s a lot of gear to risk.

This shot was made during the Unlimited 4′s… Carl DESTROYED the rear end on his truck coming off a jump. I was fairly sure he was going over the way that he landed (right in front of where I was shooting from). He held it together just fine, but the truck was done – and he was out of that race.

Flames were pretty common in the Unlimited 2′s and Superlite classes. There were mainly three trucks or so that kept backfiring when they landed. KMC Wheels was one of those trucks. I was able to get a few pretty good shots of it. This image looks really soft as I read this post – I need to double check if my images are being resized on upload… grrr.

Last but not least… another preview of the portraits I was shooting yesterday. These are quite simple, rough, harsh portraits of the various drivers. I shot these with hard, direct light for the really dramatic and powerful effect. What these guys do for a living is pretty hardcore, I wanted some cool images to show that attitude. The above driver, Leroy, is the driver who flipped his truck last month (see earlier posts for photos). Really great guy and his race team has treated me great this weekend.

So, now it’s about time to start packing up my gear and get ready to ready to head out. I have one more day/night of race coverage for this event. We’ll see if I feel like setting up my Speedlites today – I’d love to play with some light and color, but am also half certain that my gear will get run over out there. hahaha.

Check back late tonight or tomorrow morning for an update of the results of the entire weekend!