Through out all forms of motor sport and in fact sport in general there are these little gems of events that although no the pinnacle of the sport do offer a really unique experience, wether thats as a driver, spectator or photographer.
Britcar 24 hours of Silverstone is one of these events. Its the only motor sport event in the Uk that see’s competitors pushing their limits for 24 hours, as a photographer that’s something that really opens up the opportunities to produce some unique work.
When covering a shorter race of say 10-15 laps which is typical for BTCC WTCC and so on your really against the clock in being able to produce the images that you want, it can often be a good 5 -10 minute walk from one photo point to the next so your really limited in to only shooting a small number of angles.
Thats not a problem with a 24 hour event you can really explore different opportunities and get off the beaten track to try and find something a bit unique. You also get some great light being able to shoot through both Sunset and then Sunrise.
However like everything there are some downsides to a 24 hour event at Silverstone. Firstly by the time its all wrapped up you’ve probably been awake for the best part of 36 hours, which can really take its toll, I really noticed simple fatigue based mistakes creeping in as the hours ticked by. This can be especially concerning when working in the pits where a momentary lapse of judgement can have you sliding over the bonnet of a ferrari or worse!
The Second issue with shooting a 24 hours at Silverstone is the fact that you have to spend 24 hours photographing Silverstone, you struggle to fill the frame with a 600mm lens and its so flat and featureless that there is no way to get an angle to add depth and interest to the image, you can work round this by shooting out the top of the stands, but that only works when they open the grandstands which is, it would appear a game of blind chance.
Anyway enough Chitchat down to the pictures
The Aquila Race car (seen here in yellow) really was in another league the picture above was taken on the second lap and car in the distance, thats the second place car. At the end of the race it was still lapping over 8 seconds a lap quicker than anything else on track.
Thats a 600mm lens with a bit of a crop looking back towards turn one, the edge of the track is a long way away! the 600mm spends a lot of time on the camera at silverstone its pretty much the go to lens thanks to F1′s requirement to have such massive run off area’s
At the other end of the scale thats about as close as you can get but its a bit precarious on a 1 foot wide ledge squeezing between the spectator fence and a 8 foot drop pretty much straight onto the race track.
Possibly the brightest paint job of the weekend the Porsche was hard to miss, taken from the same position as the image above but with a 600mm lens looking down towards the next apex.
The low sunlight as the sunset lets you use track furniture to get some texture and shape into the images that you never normally get the chance to use.
Its amazing how just changing the focal length can really change the feel and the look of an image.
As the sunsets and you get into that magical twilight time you get to have some awesome fun with headlights and really slow shutters, this is shot down and a 1/30th and the pan is I’m pretty sure as much pure luck as it is skill.
Silverstone is a great place to photograph when its at capacity with spectators but it takes a lot of people to make it look busy other wise it looks pretty quite.
One of the best places to be at night is hanging out around the pits, mainly as its one of the few places with any decent lighting that and there is a constant stream of activity to photograph.
An angle thats been done a million times mainly by lazy photographers who can’t be bothered to leave the press room, looking straight down out the angle windows you get this amazing overhead view of whats going on in the pits.
For a while it looked like Team Eclipse were going to go for an un-orthadox change of car, I can only hope that those mud gards are FIA homologated…..
Back out on track is dark, as in really dark the only light comes from the headlights of the cars as they thunder past the above was shot at 1/30 iso 4000 and is only illuminated by the headlights of the car chasing down the Ferrari.
Once the sun has gone down you loose all real sense of time and location , you struggle to tell one car from the next as they fly past Sunrise kinda happens with no real warning and the next thing you know your back in full daylight.
Ever since the roof first went on I’ve been hoping that I could get this image to work , normal racing doesn’t start till 9 am at the very latest by which point the sun is too high and this image just doesn’t work, this image was taken about 8am after half an hour of waiting for the sun to reach the edge of the track, certainly think it was worth the weight!
That pretty much wraps up my experience of britcar a truly exhausting if incredibly unique event, made better by a freak weekend of blistering sunshine.
Don't forget you can now also follow me on twitter or like me on facebook.
Pingback: 24 hours of Britcar – by Dom Romney | The Photo Brigade