Addicted to Speed

There's certainly an art to sports photograpy, and a lot of wildlife photographers have come to realize that the art of shooting race car drivers or football players is quite similar to the art of catching an animal in action. Split second timing, and conciousness of both the foreground and background, and critical focusing all come into play. Patience, and cat-like reflexes come into play. Of course, being at the right place to get the picture and having all the right presets programmed into your camera make a difference too. Look at the setup where the photographer in the yellow vest is photographing the oncoming race traffic. There's a little bit of K-rail and a chain link fence with some big cutouts in it. Having a big lens like the 300 f2.8 ends up being a help because you can put it in aperture priority mode at, say, f4, and have a nice shallow depth of field, which helps isolate your subject, the oncoming car, from the background cars behind it.

A lot of wildlife photography involves anticipating what the animal's going to do next. In cases like the duck coming in from a landing, this is easy. The takeoffs, however take a little more knowedge to capture. Understanding how the animal thinks may pay off here. Just like knowing your way around a racetrack helps with race car photography . Every track has spots that are good for passing. Every passing attempt has a setup. It's a lot easier to see this from the driver's seat that it is from the sidelines. If you see the track from a driver's eye, you're going to learn how to shoot. If you see the lake from the bird's eye, it's got approach flight paths, landing zones, and good places to start takeoff runs. There are rivalries and ground the competitors try to hold on to. The racetrack and the wildlife sanctuary aren't too different from each other once you get to know them. The racer setting up a pass gives up a little entrance speed on the proceeding corner so he can be slow in, but get on the throttle earlier as he comes out. The bird looking to take off may look right, and then left, and then hit the gas.

If we want to understand car racing, we can read books. Alternatively, we can get an SCCA membership, join a car club, take some hot laps at an open track session or an HPDE event, or even go to a race driving school. Of course, when it comes to wildlife photography, we can't become a bird for a day, so our best course of action is to read books about animals and learn everything about them before we go out in the field. In both auto racing and wildlife photography, a little bit of homework before the shoot goes a long way.

One other parallel. The big holes in the fence give you the opportunity to get a great shot, but something dangerous that you didn't anticipate might fly out at you. So do your homework, stay alert, and go get that once in a lifetime shot!