From humble beginnings…

Looks like my first ‘published’ photograph has been determined. Just got an email on Flickr requesting usage of this image of the Macarthur Maze accident. The sender? Someone from the German Dangerous Goods online magazine! Next stop, the Sports Illustrated cover, baby. ☺

That series of six on the freeway meltdown has far exceeded any of my other shots in terms of views on Flickr. One of them has 133 views, which is a record for me. I guess fiery destruction appeals to a broader audience than Ferraris do.

Yesterday I went to Sears Point for the AMA Superbike race. I rented a BIG lens, a Canon 300mm f/2.8L, and a monopod to help me carry the monster around. It only weighs 5.6 pounds according to the spec sheet, but by the end of the day it feels like 50. Even though this rental is a bit worn on the outside, its quality is very good and I if I had $4,000 I would buy one.

Each time I have a photo day like this, I learn some very valuable things. The main lesson yesterday was this: when you’re going to the trouble to rent a lens and haul all your equipment to the racetrack, make sure you haul ALL your equipment. I’d filled up my first of three memory cards by about 11am, and when I went to swap for a new one I realized I had not transferred either of the other two to the larger camera backpack. The 2-gig card in the camera was all I had.

I had to retreat to one of the tunnels that allow foot traffic to enter the interior of the course so I could edit my bad shots out right on the camera. I hate doing this, because even though DSLR screens are getting bigger and better, they are still too small to give an accurate impression of an image’s quality. Mainly, you can’t tell on that tiny screen if your focus is sharp or not. Only on the big computer screen can you make a good judgment about this. So there I was, a poser with this fancy lens and monopod deleting shots I hoped I would throw away anyway. For the rest of the day I was constantly deleting shots as I took them and being very careful about when I hit the shutter button.

This was hard for me because I’m pretty much a spray and pray photographer. I try to get in a good spot and then take loads of exposures hoping that a few will happily turn out right. I just put 53 images up on Flickr, and I believe I’d have had more if I’d brought more than one roll of film, to use an old metaphor. But I doubt I’ll ever make that mistake again, which is largely the point of these practice/learning sessions.

I met a few interesting people at the track and will be posting about those encounters and other topics from the track this week. Stay tuned!