Photography news, before it happens

"I photographed my first ever motorsports event on an Arca Swiss 4x5 camera" is written by Kieran Elson (website | Facebook):

I couldn't let the opportunity to see England's first closed rally slide by me, a huge part of my childhood was watching Colin Mcrae in his iconic Subaru Impreza. I couldn't wait to finally see a live rally event, so how would I approach a rally in 2018?

I have never photographed motorsports before, should I bring a 200, 400, or how about a fisheye? I decided to look at photographs from modern reporters, see what kind of photographs are being made. A quick google search revealed 1000's of pin sharp photographs of the cars either drifting or jumping, now while we all like to see gravel and water frozen in time with perfectly focused cars, I was a little disappointed to see that nothing looked any different from my 2005 WRC calendar. But this did make sense the camera format hadn't changed after all, going digital didn't really change the look of the images it just increased the image size.

I wanted to create something different, there would be no point in copying what has already been done a thousand times.

So what better to bring to a motorsports event than a 4x5 monorail Arca Swiss? With its 0 fps, manual focus, permanent viewfinder black out and maximum of 10 shots what could go wrong? Well plenty, the lens broke, my first batch of film failed and one of the film holders developed a new light leak.

Read More »