For this fourth entry in our photographers’ series of insights into motorsports photography, while watching on television a rainy IndyCar race in Toronto, I thought that I’d offer a late-April photo from wet Barber Motorsports Park, whose IndyCar race had been delayed more than two hours due to raining thunderstorms.
![Simon Pagenaud chasing race leaders Will Power and Scott Dixon](http://openpaddock.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Simon-Pagenaud-2014-Barber-Motorsports.jpg)
This isn’t one of my favorite photos from that rainy day. I share this only to illustrate one of several ideals that I keep in mind when photographing racers in paddocks, pit lane, or on-track — ‘Try for something different.’
I don’t favor photographing the rears of formula cars. They’re not the most flattering views, and they don’t depict the drivers. This was not my first choice of a rainy-day photo for In Focus.
I had photographed much racing from various vantages around Turn 5 and beside the straight between Turns 11 and 12, beside other photographers, and alone in a few places. After trying to ‘capture’ cars that were nearing 160 mph on the straightaway, I thought that I’d walk about 90 meters toward Turn 12 and then see if I could make any decent photos of the guys braking, zooming through the kink, descending, and then powering uphill and right. I didn’t think that I had been there previously.
I knelt beside the guard-rails, prefocused on the painted curb, and then waited for cars to come into view (fast) from the left. I made a dozen photos in a couple of minutes and assumed that some were ‘keepers’ and differed from others that I – and other photographers – made that day.
This isn’t one of the typical photos of racing side-by-side in Turns 17, 5, and 2. It is rather a ‘different’ view which complements the other, commonly-seen views of those competitors and that beautiful road course.
I love the “Try for something different.” motto! I need to make that into a little sticker I can put on my lens hood for this weekend. Nice job, Brian.