fred_sickler

I tend to agree with Erin on this issue. I, too, have a few images of accident scenes that I have never distributed, but that I've kept on file. If you are photographing at these events I think there are a few questions you have to ask yourself when you capture images of this type:

 

1 What is the track's policy on accident scene images? I've been in two different photo briefings so far this year where the media director has given specific instructions on the handling of accident scenes.

 

2 What are the short and long term repercussions of publishing a graphic accident scene image? If you are a credentialed photographer then you're part of the publicity machine promoting the sport. An image that only conveys the occasional brutality may not serve your long term interests.

 

3 Finally, if you were a member of the injured person's family, a friend or teammate, would you want to see a graphic image of them suffering in print?

Stay with the low ISO films you've been using. As Jessica Hill, Jay Hector and Jim Mucklin have stated above, a lower ISO will give you the best results and preserve the sense of motion you need for racing shots. Before I switched to digital my films of choice were Fuji Velvia (ISO 50), Agfa RSX (ISO 100) and Kodak Ektachrome Professional (ISO 200). Now with digital I rarely stray above ISO 200 and even in the gloom and rain of last week's SVRA event at Road America I was still shooting at ISO 200. (For examples go to www.vintagevelocity.com)

I've fondled a few Leicas, but it just doesn't compare to groping a Rolleiflex TLR. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go have a cigarette. ;-)

I think that depends on whether anyone gets any useful information out of the forum. It may be the least active of the PN forums.

No, you don't. Credentialed media are admitted free to the events they cover and you may also want to ask the press office about a parking pass, also.

No, you don't. Credentialed media are admitted free to the events they cover and you may also want to aske the press office about a parking pass, also.

Fernando's comments make a good, brief primer on what you should plan for and how to approach this event, but I have to disagree with him about the film ISO. In the bright sunlight of North Central Mexico I'd stick with a film with an ISO range of 50 to 200. Remember that if you freeze the rotation in the wheels you'll lose any impression of motion in the car. High shutter speeds, and wide open apertures, are best suited for head-on shots where the wheels aren't as visible.

 

As far as settings for shutter speed and aperture you can take a look at some of the recent shots in my Sports portfolio on PN that contain information in the "Details" section on aperture, shutter speed and ISO (http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=388143).

 

Other PN members have posted some WRC shots and you might want to take a look at their portfolios for some ideas on composition:

 

Santi Martinez Romero - http://www.rccompeticion.com/galeria/Photos/Temp2004/rallycatalunya/catalunya2004.php#

 

and Juha Kivekäs -

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=417580

 

Have fun and I hope you post some of your results.

In the advertising industry there is a tradition of producing advertisements "on spec." That is, producing advertisements for products that the agency was not in a contractual relationship with for as a means of generating new business. The web site www.adcritic.com, before it became a subscription only service, was a repository of many "on spec" commercials for real products. While this is not the answer from PN you were looking for it should indicate to you that the advertising industry has a history of doing exactly what you're trying to do.

I'd like to expand a little on Jay Hector's comments above if I may. By action Jay means movement and at a minimum you have to show movement in the wheels. In Jay's link number 2 the main image contains a lot of indicators of motion because it's a panning shot. But you won't be doing panning shots all day so take a look at the smaller inset image on that same link. There's no panning here to indicate motion, but Jay indicates motion nonetheless by showing the rotation of the wheels. You can learn a lot from Jay's work. He's a racing pro and an award winning photographer.

Not having much experience in online photo sales I was wondering if

other PN members have some knowledge in this area and could

recommend a good software package for doing image sales online.

Something along the lines of me posting a gallery of an event and

allowing visitors to view thumbnails, enlarge images, add them to

their shopping cart and then do all the checkout functions. This is

primarily for event photos, but could it also be used for stock

images without a lot of compromises? Any help is greatly

appreciated.

Norman Perkel has covered several of the reasons, such as the inability of AF systems to track at some speed ranges, but it is the second reason he gives, pre-focus on an area to capture a moment, that is IMHO the more critical for control of composition.

 

Despite the sophistication of some AF camera viewfinders the focusing spots they allow one to choose do not always work for the composition you are trying to achieve. If you are attempting an off-center composition, or one with a lot of negative space in the center of the image, MF will allow you the greater control you need. For panning shots, which typically benefit from an off-center composition, my experience is that MF results in a higher success rate. MF does require that the sports photographer have a detailed knowledge of their sport and where the action that will make for a successful shot will develop. That may sound difficult, but who among us actively shoots things we are not interested in?

 

This does not mean that AF has no place in sports photography. In motorsports there are situations, the start, the crush of cars at the first corner, blown engines and accidents that are all more suited for AF, but for shots where you?re trying to capture a moment, as Norman so succinctly put it, MF makes more sense.

Which events?

The odd thing about either of those Latrigue shots is the oval shape of the tires that convey the sense of motion, despite the static backgrounds. If you were to use similar equipment and post a modern version of either of those shots in PN today you'd get a slew of comments about the wheels being Photoshopped and the background being too static. Of course most of those comments would come from people with no experience of shooting racing and without consideration of the limitations of the equipment.

 

As for Anthony Brooke's statement, while I agree that F1 has become progressively more processional, that doesn't mean that photographing it is a waste of time or that the images are a bore. If you go back to the 1950s or '60s, as he suggests, and look at the work of Alexander, Cahier or Klemantaski you won't see a greater number of images of cars passing then, either. A lot of the images are single car shots, just as they are today. As for the not seeing the driver's faces, that's often true, but not always. I've seen images by John Thawley in Sportsshooter.com of ALMS events where you can clearly read the expression in the driver's eyes and in amateur and vintage racing it's far easier to capture facial expressions(see http://www.photo.net/photo/2717807).

 

As Jay has stated, it's the motivation and creativity of the photographer that makes the difference and it makes the difference no matter what the era or what safety equipment the driver is, or is not, wearing.

 

As for Sheldon's original question, I checked gptours.com and their prices are even higher, though they're only offering "Gold" tickets. But I guess if you can afford a Leica, you can afford the tickets. ;-)

IMHO the perfect person answered your post. Witty is the most frequent contributor and best stock car racing photographer on photo.net. As for the dearth of others posting images from Nextel or Busch Cup races there are posts from time to time in the Sports Photography critique section of through-the-fence or pit shots. While I've never shot NASCAR I have shot at Daytona for a vintage racing event and did try to shoot from the stands. The security staff at Daytona was perfectly courteous and professional, but also very firm that they would not allow me to shoot from along the fence line. Fear of injury was their primary concern. As I had media credentials for that event I'd imagine the situation is even harder at typical NASCAR or Busch events. There's a discussion thread on www.sportsshooter.com that may also be of interest to you:

 

http://www.sportsshooter.com/message_display.html?tid=1726

I've never been to Laguna Seca so I can't help you there. As for film speed I think it depends on your lenses. If you're using fast glass I'd suggest Fuji Velvia 50 or 100 or Agfa RSX 100 or a comparable print film. From what I've seen on TV the weather is usually good at Laguna so higher ISO ratings shouldn't be necessary and you do want the wheels to indicate motion. Hopefully someone here is familar with Laguna Seca and can fill you in on preferred shooting locations. Good luck and I hope you post some of your results.

I've just posted an image on photo.net that will hopefully illustrate some of the value of a neutral density filter. It's a panning shot from the inside of Turn 5 at Road America as a Porsche locks its front wheels under braking. As the details of the image note, this is 1/160th of a second at f8. At the same aperture and without the ND filter the shutter speed would have been 1/640th of a second and I would've lost the wheel spin evident in the rear wheel. You can see the image at:

 

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?topic_id=1481&msg_id=009IPw&photo_id=2644947&photo_sel_index=0

I've posted a shot of Bruno Junqueira that demonstrates why I don't think an ND filter is really appropriate for panning shots:

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/2619965

 

The shot still works pretty well, but had I removed the ND filter I might've been able to stop down to f22 for the same or lower shutter speed and gotten more motion blur in the background.

 

After this test I'll be purchasing an ND filter for my 500mm lens, which I use mostly for head-on or slight angle shots, and I'll let you know how it works.

I used a B&W 0.6 neutral density filter for the first time at last weekend's Champ Car race at Road America. On the Nikon D70 with its minimum ISO of 200, the 2 stop filter factor of the ND 0.6 meant that shots done wide open at f2.8 had shutter speeds of between 1/250th and 1/1000th, depending on lighting conditions and angle, or about 1/4th of what they would be without the filter. The lower shutter speeds allowed considerably more motion blur to occur in wheels without loss of sharpness in the car itself, which is exactly the effect I wanted. There are downsides to these filters, of course, as it makes manual focusing more difficult through a dimmer viewfinder and on partly cloudy days a passing cloud can block enough light to cause the shutter speed to become too low. The darkening of the viewfinder is a particular concern on the Nikon D70 which has a small finder, especially in comparison to my F100. I also found that ND filters are not appropriate for panning shots, as the filter factor will cause a larger aperture to be used in shutter priority mode, thus reducing some of the background blur. Despite the downsides I think they are quite useful and I will be purchasing a few more ND filters of various density factors to have broader control of the shutter speed range.

Norman makes a good case that passion is what makes many of us shoot motorsports and drives us to work, perfect and excel at this particular area of photography. It's passion that keeps me going back to Road America, where I first started photographing races, and to try new tracks to see what the possibilities a different venue might afford.

 

But while passion gets me to the track and keeps me going through some often hot, sweaty days, what has become more important to me since the start of this racing season is planning. It's reviewing the schedule of practice and qualifying sessions for the main and supporting events and determining where to shoot at what time of day to get the best lighting conditions and to build up a stock of both safety and experimental shots from practice and qualifying so that when the actual race occurs I can concentrate on shooting the on-track competition.

 

That planning extends to individual shots and the choice of vantage points to get one or several different angles. At each vantage point a composition and variations for the shots is decided upon before the start of on-track activity. For shots of cars(s) cornering my camera doesn't move much and autofocus is used to pick a point on the track for focus and then wait for the shot to develop in the viewfinder. For panning shots I've used both autofocus and the manual focus technique of picking a spot on the track and firing the shutter when the image in the viewfinder is just moving into focus. In either case it's a single shot that gets fired, not a string of shots using the motor drive. Occasionally I screw up and fire more than one, but the results are usually disappointing.

 

While most of my shooting is a series of single shot, planned in advance compositions, there are occasions that call for both autofocus and the motordrive. I tend to think of these as "developing situations" where the action moves quickly and a fast sequence of shots is called for. A recent example would be the standing start to the Formula Junior race at a vintage event where the cars would accelerate out of view in a few seconds. Shot overhead from the starter's bridge with a wide-angle lense the fourth image of twelve shot over two seconds turned out to be the best. Another recent example is a sequence I shot last weekend of Mike Lewis exiting his burning Trans Am Jaguar. I shot a sequence of ten shots shows him emerging from the car. Three of the shots, not in order, make a nice montage of him escaping, but one of the shots alone could also tell the story (see attached). At the time this happened there wasn't much time to think about composition so autofocus and a motordrive came in handy and I might have missed these shots without them.

 

In short, a motordrive and autofocus are nice to have, but more and more I find myself planning my shots in advance and shooting manually for a lot of my work.<div></div>

I picked up a 0.6 ND filter today. A 0.6 means the loss of 2 f-stops which on the Nikon D70 will be equivalent to the speeds I'm used to shooting with Fuji Velvia 50. I'll let you know what I learn after this weekend's CART race at Road America.

For what Nikon push/pull zooms are selling for on Ebay I think it might be worthwhile to pickup a used on and try some shots. If I get any interesting results I'll post them here.

Sean Noonan posted a similar question here recently and got several responses. You can find that discussion at:

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=008zYm

Thanks to all who contributed a response to this question. :-)

Recently I was also wondering about rain protection for sports shooting and found a discussion of available gear in an old forum question on PN. Here's the link:

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0014QM

When they hustle you through the high security "defendant's only" corridors and elevators at the Federal Court building here in Chicago be sure to take a look around: my Dad designed them.

 

I'm just kidding about you being arrested.....but not about my Dad designing those areas of the building.

 

 

Many professional associations provide information for their members on how to determine pricing for their services. I know the American Institute of Architects does and they often hold seminars on proper pricing practices at local and national meetings, as well as devoting a chapter of the AIA Handbook of professional Practice to these issues. For your question though, the best resource might be the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP). While you won't have access to most of the resources they provide to their members, they do have some available to the public and a search using the term "pricing" turned up a number of free articles. They can be found at http://www.asmp.org. They also publish a book on photography business practices that I've found useful and you can see it at(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1581151977/qid=1091058534/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-2447475-3806367?v=glance&s=books.

 

 

Finally, I respectfully disagree with Chris that this type of open forum constitutes price fixing. Law.com provides the following definition of price fixing:

 

Price Fixing

n. a criminal violation of federal antitrust statutes in which several competing businesses reach a secret agreement (conspiracy) to set prices for their products to prevent real competition and keep the public from benefitting from price competition. Price fixing also includes secret setting of favorable prices between suppliers and favored manufacturers or distributors to beat the competition.

 

Good luck with your potential sale!