In another life, I was a championship winning team manager and with it, I carried two cameras with me on my many trips. Most of the time, I would shoot with a 5 megapixel Nikon 5700, and as a back up, I had a Lomo LCA film camera. For me, the cameras were tools to help with the communications aspects of the vocation.

The two are indistinguishable as a tool. I felt right at home shooting on both mediums, though I did find the zone focus system on the Lomo a bit limiting. Digital was useful. It gave me pictures of the car and driver whenever someone from the press wanted them.

First, I must tell you how I came about as a team manager. I was head hunted for the job during my stint as an ad-hoc PR consultant for Johor Circuit. My involvement in motor racing at that point had been editorial and communications, and previously to this, I was the Media Officer for the Rally of Asia. For that role, I took a whole load of pictures which were later used as the main content for newspapers as the official photographer appointed for that event actually fucked it up badly by just taking pictures of cars on the dirt road. 

My reputation as a race savvy manager was unknown to me but people within the industry saw that I did good work so why not double down on the position of team manager. This came about in 2003.... for the inaugural Porsche Carrera Cup Asia Championship. 

Charles Kwan, 2003 Porsche Carrera Cup Asia Champion

The role offered to me was simple enough, I could learn on the job and do the motorsports communications for Novellus Infineon Racing based out of Switzerland. Infineon was run by a bunch of Porsche fanatics and they had decided to compete in all the Carrera Cup Championships all over the world. The communications part was very small, I wrote press releases for the races and had that emailed to Switzerland. 

I didn't have to submit photos but I did take them on the side. Charles Kwan, the team driver with five asia pacific touring car championships under his belt was very accommodating. He would tell when when he's free for some pictures and I would take them for use should the sponsors asked. This happened like clock work. Sponsors are your patrons, you must always live up to that expectation with the necessary photos in hand.

Damaged fender was replaced with spares, hence the white colored parts. Sepang Circuit 2003

I loved doing photography but the opportunity to shoot were rare. most of the time you were far too busy with team affairs to worry about a photo opportunity. Regardless of what you think, there isn't time to do justice when it comes to your job. Once you get to the circuit, a whole routine had to be run to ensure the car and driver is at optimum for the race. There are no short cuts because if any irresponsibility can cause someone his life. Then there was the press, who badgered for time to talk to the driver. A photo op maybe? Yea, sure once we are finished doing what we are suppose to do, that is to win races.

This meant that I never had the time to shoot the car when its out on qualifying trials or at free practise. It would be irresponsible to do this for the sake of fun.

During the quiet moments, sure you had the time to photograph the models, and models here don't mean cars. These are girls who don sponsored labels on their attire for photographers who work within the paddock area. Everyone else will have to use a long telephoto lens to get a closer look. As a team manager, you look like everyone else who worked in the pits. Not a very attractive proposition but you have to get your hands dirty all the time. I had to wheel in the racing slicks (tyres for racing use) which had to be checked and verified as we were limited to one new set per event.

Why Motorsports is Dangerous for Photographers

Getting paddock access is very difficult for safety reasons. Photographers or spectators usually get a pit walk at some point on Saturday events but that's not a given opportunity. Some tracks prefer to keep spectators where they can control them best....at the grandstands. 

Press photographers have photog nests around the circuit where they can hide out until the cars come racing round. They get to stand in the hot sun, have their skins toasted to a golden brown in the process. But this was fun to them. It was also highly dangerous as cars do go sideways and with it, take any standing photographer nearby up to meet their maker. Thankfully, none of the accidents we had during the Cup races were fatal. Egos were bruised naturally but never a death. 

But that's not to say it didn't happen in other racing events. I know a few who were involved in such unfortunate events. A fellow driver in the Porsche Carrera Cup had one bad experience where his Ferrari caught fire and the Marshals came to help put the fire out. A speeding car took three of them down. All of them died. This was in Macau. A place famous for its unforgiving street circuits and was the last event for the Porsche race. 

Photographers who want to shoot at the starting grid have to get grid access. There are a limited number of passes and it's always the national press photographers that get the first lot. The grid access only allows you to shoot what you see on the grid and paddock area. 

Photographers normally don't get both track and grid access. Those who stay on the grid are a different kind of photographer and those shooting on track are strictly for circuit action. The races are far too short for photographers to get both track side and grid access. A sprint race like the Porsche Carrera cup last only about 30 mins at most. In accident prone tracks, this could stretch longer but it depends on the circuit length. There is no time for a photographer to run around a circuit to take scenic shots. It is possible in Formula One, where the races stretch over an hour and a half at times.

Chandra, our car mechanic has a last word with Charles before he goes out to race

 Keeping the Cars Clean and Shiny

You have no idea on the extremes we have to keep the cars clean. After all, the sponsors want their brands to stand out so every time the car goes out, the scratches on the logos and damages to the car must be inspected and if possible, changed at a moment's notice. 

We had a box full of decals on standby and once there was a altercation on track, we had to change the front bumper and replace all the stickers. In Beijing, where we had a race at Goldenport motor park and had to clean the car every few hours because a thin layer of desert sand had deposited on the car. It was such a nuisance that we eventually covered the car up in a Porsche issued custom cover before we left for the day to avoid cleaning it again the following day. 

Keeping the cars clean and beautiful is really about that photo moment. People would snap pictures and post it around and that's what we want. It's all part of the sponsorship package. 

Charles Kwan and Benard Quek

To be frank on matters of responsibility, the only time you can have fun with the camera is when the race is over. During that time, you take pictures of the paddock area, fellow drivers and even friends working with competing teams. 

I didn't find much use for the Lomo but it was a useful off track camera. For me, the idea of shooting your journey through every event was a challenge to say the least. There were gaps as you were far too busy to shoot or when it rained like the monsoon during our race in Johor, Malaysia. None of the cameras would have held up to the rain so no point taking them out. To properly document the journey throughout the season, you would need to have a dedicated photographer, which we didn't have a budget for. 

I didn't even have the time to fully appreciate Macau, our last race of the season. But we won and that's what mattered. We won the championship by just two points. It was a hard fought battle from Malaysia, Thailand, Korea, China and finally to Macau.This was a beautiful place, charming to a fault, and with a lovely mix of cultures. The pictures I took that time left an impression on me but those are my private memories. Korea was nice but the circuit was located too far from civilization...at the Taebeak mountains. Going back to Seoul, we had a few days to enjoy the wonderful city. Charles met up with a Korean actor, Jung Woo Sung, and I whipped out my Lomo for that moment. 

Actor Jung Woo Sung with Charles Kwan, captured with a Lomo LCA

Using the Lomo was a hit or miss affair. The film I used suited the moment but there were times when the Lomo let me down. I did carry both cameras with me but somehow, it's always the film cameras that leave an impression on your because they are so darn hard to use when you are in a hurry. 

Lomo moment in Beijing Goldenport Circuit

At the end of the race in Macau, I did the right thing which shocked a lot of people.  I announced my retirement from motor sports. I always felt that you should retire when you are up there with the best and I am glad I did. Those memories that I have are still around in my photo album, and boy that was one helluva ride.

Speed. For professionals who hang around the track all day shooting racing cars, you pretty much end up with the same type of images because you are restricted by the angle that you are allowed to shoot. Often you find the same type of images floating around on the Web that shows some kind of speeding vehicle frozen at the exact moment in time. For stuff like this, you can't capture this unless you have a DSLR capable of up to 1/2000 of a sec shutter speed.

For me, I prefer shooting motion rather than freezing them as this gives a different look to the images instead of the same old, same old styles seen everywhere from billboard advertisements to print and web advertising.

When I started shooting these, I was still shooting on film. Imagine what I could have done with digital as it would have been a whole lot easier with the top of the line DSLRs you have today.

But the way forward is still the same. You gotta know your shutter speed. For motion capture like these, you need to know how to pan the camera.

Panning, as you follow your subject through a fixed path of motion, is what gives you the ability to capture speed and motion in your pictures.

Motion Capture Tips

1. The best shutter speed to capture motion is 1/125 sec
2. Make sure your subject is moving in a parallel line to your panning movement
3. AF should be OFF (if you haven't got a spiffy DSLR with super fast AF)...AND 
4. Prefocus your Distance to Subject
5. Use a Monopod to steady your panning

The aperture value is irrelevant as long as there is sufficient light. If there isn't then dial up your ISO to 1600 and preset your Shutter Speed to 1/125. In the days of film, photographers were handicapped by the film speeds of between ASA/ISO 100 to 400. Shooting with ISO speeds of 800 were not widespread due to the grain. That is irrelevant these days with digital cameras which perform well with minimum grain at ISO3200.

Minimizing Background Blur at 1/250

Seems like it is frozen but notice that the wheels are turning

For others, you may want to minimize background blur by shooting at a slightly higher speed of 1/125 just to get the wheels in motion. This depends heavily on the distance to subject and of course the telephoto lens you are using. Shorter lenses (200mm) will need to capture at shutter speeds of 1/125 whereas longer telephoto lenses (above 300mm) will require shutter speeds (between 1/250 to 1/500). Longer telephoto lenses tend to magnify movement so less panning movement is required. The movement is very much amplified at longer telephoto lenses, say between 300mm to 800mm so you need to judge the speed in which the car or bike is carrying on a straight or around corners. The important thing here is to mount your gear on a monopod. You could also fashion a monopod out of a Tripod if you didn't know any better. Just don't use all three legs and only extend ONE of the legs out to help you balance your gear. Hand holding your camera is no recommended at longer focal lengths.



Shooting Around Corners

Motion panning can be done around corners as well but the effect is different, meaning that the subject is less sharp and appear to be blurry. That's because you use a slow shutter speed of 1/60 sec.

All vehicles will have to slow down to take a corner and when you are sitting smack in the middle of one, then you will be using a wide lens instead of a telephoto lens. A standard 50mm lens (full frame) would suffice.

You can of course use a wide angle lens such as a 35mm or 28mm if you are really close to the action—like when you can extend your hand out to touch them but that is rarely the case with racing circuits.


Freezing Motion

When you have a DSLR capable of 1/2000 sec shutter speed. It is very easy for you to freeze motion. You can also freeze motion at 1/250 when the vehicle is in low speeds around corners.

This is probably the first place you will find most trackside photographers camping out. They will of course choose the same angles as everyone else as action shots don't really differ much from one location to another when you want to freeze the action. Getting to a high or low place depends on your access to the track. If you have clear access to trackside shooting spots, you will probably get a chance to use a longer telephoto lens on dedicated racing circuits.

Street circuits, like Monaco and Macau, require lower telephoto ranges, around 200mm and less since you don't have a lot of places on the track which you can fully utilize 300mm. The most common uses for a 300mm lens is a head on shot during the start of the race as all the cars are bunched up together running into the first corner. After this, you'll have to pick out your targets one by one as the race progresses.

 I am often reminded how easy it is to shoot in digital. Just dial in the auto mode and fire away. You can't go wrong especially if you have RAW file mode enabled.

That's why the challenge in photography often lies in using film. These two photos were shot on slide. The first is of Johnny Herbert, F1 driver and the second one Shinichi Ito, Suzuka 8 Hour winner and 500cc MotoGP rider.

Film doesn't have the super sharp pixel density you often see in high resolution digital cameras. The quality is different. I realize this when I was browsing the photos at 500px,com, look carefully and you'd see the sharpening and detail. Not a bad thing but it is almost unreal.

Film has its unique look. The analogue quality is evident the moment you look at it. The dynamic range is different too.

Shooting film is very challenging because you need to know what film to use. Expose it wrongly and you'll find it difficult to recover the detail. Mistakes are often fatal, and there is no turning back.

Film may have a much bigger latitude but that doesn't mean you can underexpose a frame and expect the quality to be the same. It isn't. If you overexpose it too much you lose the detail in high contrast scenes. Zone metering is probably a good way to get a correct exposure. Slide film is more difficult, with a latitude of about 2/3 of a stop. Negatives can still hold an image with a 1.3 stop difference.

I wish Kodachrome was still around. Store it well, these slides will last for ages. It was my preferred choice even when the latitude was very narrow. Kodachrome 64 only has 1/3 stop latitude and shooting high contrast scenes can be very difficult. In zone metering, where you take the darkest and lightest areas of a scene to get an average, the difference can be up to 5 stops. How you select an exposure to capture the best detail is crucial. Metering on a grey card is often the preferred choice.

I love my Nikons. The FM2 and FE2 are my choice favs. I do love my F4 too, but I don't have much time to shoot with it now that I am playing around with smaller cameras like the Pen-f.