Goodwood Festival of Speed
Earlier this month a friend offered me his spare ticket, pretty much at the last minute. “Would I be interested?”, he asked. “Yep!”, I replied without hesitation!
I rather like cars. I am no expert, I have to admit but I can remember playing Top Trumps when I was a lad with my school friends. My Dad also worked for Corgi toys at the time, who were the purveyors of the best (after Dinky Toys) toy cars and vehicles of all sorts.
All you needed back then was your imagination and believe you me, Festival of Speed, sparked off that very same imagination but more in the sense of - “If I was a millionaire, I would buy one of those… or maybe one of those”. One can dream.
Like many events recently, they’ve all been impacted by the Coronavirus with many being cancelled or postponed until a later time. My friend Lee and his dad had purchased tickets to attend last year (2020) but then it didn’t happen, until July of this year. Lee’s dad couldn’t attend due to work commitments and that is how I ended up taking his place. Lee is keen to learn more and improve his photography (aren’t we all to be honest!) and so I had some fun sharing ideas and techniques. One of those being the Dutch Tilt or Dutch Angle.
Going Dutch
Did you know the Dutch Tilt was in fact invented in Germany during the war and has nothing to do with the Netherlands at all? No neither did I! Thanks Google…
Anyway, here is an example
It is a common technique, you may have seen it used in other publications such as Top Gear before, it helps add an element of dynamism to the photo and if I had taken this at a normal angle, it just wouldn’t have looked… so cool ;)
Mind you, you can’t take a bad photo of an Aston Martin can you! Yes I would love to own one of these. The McClaren below is another car I’d have on that dream on sunshine shopping list. What is it about garish colours and supercars? I wouldn’t buy a Ford Fiesta in this colour but I certainly would one of these. Funny that isn’t it?
Maybe this Jaguar driver out on the track was also influenced by those early German filmmakers by taking the tilt to a whole new level. We watched around the corner how he set off, built up only a little speed up onto a ramp to achieve this position and through a combination of techniques including micro adjustments to his steering and speed, could this be achieved. I believe the car was not rigged in any special way.
He maintained this position around the track, some crazy skills on show here…
An incredible man
Towards the end of the day, we were walking around the paddocks and by this time, we were thinking of calling it a day but there was still plenty to see, we felt like we had only scratched the surface of this enormous event. Trust me it is massive and I can totally understand why people go for the entire weekend. You probably need it, to do Goodwood justice. Plus there are many different events taking place over the week and a mixture of themes.
Anyway it was at this point in the day, we had just turned a corner and spotted a film crew by one of the tents. They were right over in a corner and I spotted a man in a wheelchair and thought nothing of it to be honest, as after all there were many camera crews, vloggers around who were filming that day. However I had figured he had either been in the car or was about to because in between him and the car was a hoist of the kind they use to aid disabled people in and out of various things. I also noticed a big team around him; I was too shy to ask plus I wasn’t sure if the cameras were rolling, though they didn’t appear to be, thinking perhaps they had already recorded. It took a couple of photos and turned around.
The following day, my friend Lee who had also been curious about this, found an interesting link, that not only solved the mystery, as to who it was and what they were filming; it moved me to tears of joy and wonder.
Our mystery man was none other than former Indycar racing driver Sam Schmidt and the film crew, the BBC.
Sam had suffered a huge setback in the year 2000 after a horrific accident left him paralysed from the shoulders down. Totally paraplegic. This year, 21 years later he was making his debut at Goodwood driving the Arrow semi-autonomous car powered by a camera that detects the driver’s head movements and a second device controlled with the mouth for acceleration. See below for a link to the story on the BBC website.
Then I was flicking through the thousand or so photos that I’d taken and was really excited to find a photo of Sam Schmidt and his co-driver racing along the track. This made my day. I would never have known how significant a photo this in fact is!
I have in the past photographed concerts, live outdoor sports events alongside the BBC as an independent member of the press. I am no racing photographer and it took me a zillion attempts to get this shot that is quite a decent photo!
What an incredible story, you can check out the BBC link here.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-57768915
Panning
One photography genre I’ve not got much experience with is in motor racing but I know what I should do, yet putting it into practice is another matter. I’ve always been told that the perfect racing shot is:
Vehicle or the subject of the photo, should be sharp
Wheels not too sharp, showing some movement helps
The background should definitely be blurred
The position of the subject in the frame should be somewhere to the left if they are moving towards the right (at high speed) or the other way round I guess!
Then there is the matter of, do you manual or auto focus with some form of continual drive mode switched on?
It’t worth turning any optical stabilisation you’ve got off in order to reduce weird edging that may occur around the image
Aperture or shutter priority? Shutter definitely and choosing the speed depends on an equation I invented but can’t share here (mainly because I am talking complete bollocks)
So for most of the event, I failed on these kind of shots to get anything worth sharing apart from this one and the photo above
That’s why I am keen to go back next year…
"I wouldn’t buy a Ford Fiesta in this colour but I certainly would one of these. Funny that isn’t it?" - Good observation, and I've sat and thought about it for a minute and I can't get to the bottom of it. Maybe something to do with utility cars looking overdressed in flash colours.