EP73 Nick Dungan | Professional Motorsport Photographer

[00:00:12] Speaker A: Good evening, this is the Camera Life podcast, or good morning, depending on where you're from. If you're where Nick is from, I guess. Nick, is it? Duncan. Duncan, yeah. Duncan, good morning. Where are you calling? Where are you in from, Nick? [00:00:29] Speaker B: I'm in south of the UK, southwest. [00:00:32] Speaker A: Of the UK and the time is there? [00:00:35] Speaker B: 10:30 in the morning. [00:00:37] Speaker A: 10:30 in the morning. Well, good morning and good to see you. Thank you for joining us on the podcast. If you're a regular listener, you'll know this is the, normally the evening show, the Camera Life podcast, normally the random show, but Nick being all the way from the uk, we had to make a special time slot for an interview. We spotted Nick after we had Andrew hall on the podcast about a month ago now, a little bit over, and we're like, we gotta have this guy on. Because Nick is an automotive and motorsport photographer, travels the world capturing great race images and studio images. And I want to find out more about how Nick got into the career and what he's up to these days. Nick, do you want to give everyone a little quick rundown on who you are and what you do? [00:01:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So I've been doing this about 10, 10, 12 years, I think now. And I, I would, I tried to call myself an automotive photographer, but I would say the lion's share of what I do is motorsport. But I do still shoot road cars and studio stuff, that stuff that's away from a racetrack, but most of it is motorsport these days. Yeah. [00:01:59] Speaker A: So 10 or 12 years. How old are you? You look very young. [00:02:03] Speaker B: You look 36. [00:02:05] Speaker A: 36, okay, so you got into this, this part of the career fairly early. Like, did you tell us, how did you get into photography? Was, did it start with motorsport or was there something before? [00:02:17] Speaker B: So I, I am a designer or was a designer, that's what my qualification is in, was in. And all through, I mean, I mean, going back way before then, I've always loved cars, love race cars like lots of kids do. And I grew up near a track in the UK called Brands Hatch. So I was about 10 minute drive away from Brands Hatch and all through uni, I, I'd been going along and I, as a fan, I used to go with my dad to watch the British touring cars, which is like our version of your V8 supercars, but less impressive. And I, I loved it and I was like, I want to get closer. And I was, I was working in a, in a place called Curry's, which, if you're from the uk, will know it's like A retailer for all electrical stuff. And I managed to buy a camera that was cheap and I sort of thought, oh, maybe I can put these two things together. I can use the camera to maybe to get a bit closer to the cars. So I used to go down to the track, saw these people taking pictures, wanted to work out how they got where they were. And I'm sort of plugging away at this all through uni, kind of learning how you do it, how cameras work, that kind of thing. Uni lecturers are kind of saying you should probably spend a bit more time at uni doing what you're paying us to do, like teach you to do design, learn design. And then I'm sort of skiving off to go to the racetrack and shoot test days and bits and bobs like that. And somehow I did come out of uni with a degree. I went on to be a product designer. I worked in a packaging design agency for five years in London. I got up to senior designer doing that, which I loved actually. Like, if I was still doing that today, I'd just be perfectly happy. Like packaging design might not sound that exciting to most people, but actually I really enjoyed it. But in the background I was still doing the photography at this point. I'd worked out to get accreditation. I worked with some newspapers, some little teams, and it was getting bigger and bigger to the point that I'm taking all of my holiday from my actual job to go and do photography and eventually ran out of holiday. So then I'm taking unpaid leave to go and do this job that doesn't really pay me much money at this point anyway. And there came a point when I. Which was when I got together with my now other half where we, we lived on opposite sides of our country, which is not as impressive as it would be if that was true in Australia, but it still was a 90 minute, 90 minute drive in opposite directions for us both to commute every day. And then I was like, well, maybe I move to the west where she lived and give this photography thing a go. If it doesn't work, then doesn't work. But that was my sort of point where I jumped, yeah, quit my job and started doing it full time. So doing photography full time, that's epic. [00:05:54] Speaker A: So how long ago was that? How many years ago did you go full time and make the jump? [00:05:58] Speaker B: You probably know that because it should be a massively important number, but I can't. I think it was 20, I think. 2014 was the first year, I think. [00:06:08] Speaker A: And since then, since then your Primary income has been through photography. [00:06:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:14] Speaker A: Wow. That's an amazing achievement. You should be very, very proud. [00:06:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I love it. I'm fortunate, I would say it's not many people that get to do it. [00:06:25] Speaker A: Particularly in automotive and motorsport. It's very, very challenging. There's so many people with a passion for that world that it's very, very competitive as you would know. There's people that are willing to work for free, for access and to try and build a career. So you're always kind of fending that off. Yeah, I guess the, the advance of people that are new to the sport. [00:06:50] Speaker B: Exactly. And I think it, it will always exist. Like it's, it is part of the, it's part of our industry. Like you have to work your way up and people will sort of do what they need to do to find their way in. And I did that when I was coming up as well and it's, it's kind of part of it. [00:07:10] Speaker A: I think. It's, it's, it's part of it and it's, it's, it's not the only way to get into it but it's, it's always going to be part of it and I guess it helps keep the seasoned professional sharp that if there's always up and comers looking to work for free to make a name for himself, that means other people can't, if they've been there for a decade or two, they can't rest on their laurels and just sort of keep doing the same work. They got to steep keep, you know, I guess working at it and leveling up. Yeah, there's always going to be someone who wants to take your spot. [00:07:46] Speaker B: Yeah. And they change as well. Like their approaches change. It's not the same as it has been for years. Particularly in the last couple of years where we've seen photography sort of changed a bit. We've gone from maybe quite traditional photography to more sort of influencer type photography where it's, you know, there's a value on someone having their own following as well working for you and the sort of style, photography style of photography they do, maybe they shoot video as well as stills. That's, that's sort of developing at the moment, particularly in some of the championships like Formula one. Formula either there a lot of these very, you know, fast reacting photographers where they edit on a mobile and it's ready to go, that kind of thing. That's, that's definitely a sort of an emerging trend. I suppose you say the sort of more traditional photography's getting more challenging to find. [00:08:54] Speaker A: That's, that's super interesting. I want to dig into that a little bit. Before we do, I just want to say a few good evenings to a few people in the chat. Good evening, Philip Johnson, Andrew Hall. Good to see you, Paul. Andrew hall says. Looking good, Nick. And good evening Rick Nelson and Bruce Moyle. If anyone else is in the chat, feel free to hit Nick up with questions. I'll pull them up intermittently throughout the interview. So if there's anything you want to ask about what Nick does, drop it in the chat and ask a question. We'll, we'll bring it up also very quickly. This podcast is brought to you by Lucky Camera Straps. We make leather camera straps here in Bendigo in Australia, but we ship them all over the world. So if you've been looking for a camera strap, you know where to find us. All right, now that we got that out of the way. So obviously traditional photography with within motorsport has always been what driven by publications and brands traditionally, like who's paying. A photographer is usually either a publication, a news outlet or something or a brand of some sort. [00:10:07] Speaker B: I think that was probably true before I was involved. I would say these days most, the biggest clients are not necessarily the biggest clients, but the most numerous ones are manufacturers. So your Porsches, people like that. Yeah. Any of those sort of manufacturers will have to have to buy photography. They, they will need different kinds of photography. So you, you might. For example, I do work with Porsche through another photographer and Porsche also bring a marketing photographer and then we represent the press element so that one brand actually uses in our. On our events actually they use three or four different photographers on the event. So you. Yeah, I'd say that manufacturers are your biggest source of work. Then you've got sponsors. People like Rolex or someone like that would usually have a photographer at least or they might have other photographers that they have arrangements with as well. The championships themselves are, you know, very big now. Like the World Endurance Championship that I, I work in that Andrew hall works in their team of photographers now is. I don't know for sure but like five, five photographers on event, something like that. Yeah. And newspapers and press and bits and bobs like that are definitely, I would say for most of my career have been less and less and less. Certainly the printed stuff is, is almost non existent in the UK now, which is sad. [00:11:56] Speaker A: Okay. And, and so who is it that's tapping on the. I guess what, what we'd label as influencers or just I guess because they can be like photographers, but they're, they're, they're people that are leveraging their followings along with their skills as a. As a photographer or videographer. Is it brands that are. That are tapping on those guys these days as well? To guys and girls. [00:12:23] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean I think they just offer a different kind of photography they offer. There's. Some of them are great at picking a moment that just is perfect for a sort of Instagram story. Sort of. I don't mean it disrespectfully but like a throwaway moment. Like it's a cool picture. Actually the photo doesn't hold up particularly well if you look at it too hard, but they are great at just. You chuck them in, you know, for a session and they come out with 10 pictures that will get someone's attention and you know, all you're trying to do is get someone to look at this particular manufacturer brand championships photos that they've achieved it because they're intriguing enough to look at. What I hope that my. How my photography and my sort of colleagues photography would differ is. It's kind of how I always think about it. If you made a coffee table book out of my photography in 20, 30 years time, would it tell a really cool story of that event? I'm not sure the sort of influencer photography would do that. I think it looks great on Instagram for a few seconds. Same with these sort of Instagram reels and things like that. But if you wanted to look back on an event, you know, if you're a driver and you paid us to take photos that would actually. You looked it and you go, I was there. That's cool. Like it's, it's timeless. Like it's good photography. It's not going to date. [00:14:07] Speaker A: Yeah. It holds up as a single image or whether it's part of a series or something like that. If you printed it out, you could look at it and have it. Yeah. Stand the test of time. [00:14:19] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:14:20] Speaker A: Put it on a wall. It's, it's, it is very interesting. Has it has that dynamic of having people that are sort of have a big following that. Yeah, I guess leveraging that following to help brands and promote brands. Has it changed your. The way you approach photography at all? [00:14:43] Speaker B: Not in my world. I wouldn't say they, they sort of operate more in your. In Formula one, Formula E, stuff like places like that. My championship. Well, my primary championship is wec and I wouldn't say we're so affected by that sort of. Not yet anyway. Maybe we will be. But I don't think they're. I don't think their following is so relevant in our championship as much as their style and pace of photography and maybe their ability to shoot video as well, which perhaps is something we should all be considering. [00:15:21] Speaker A: I was gonna say, is it something you've looked into? Have you shot. Do you shoot video now? Or have you played with it at all? [00:15:27] Speaker B: Played with it a little bit. It's definitely something I'm. I'm working on. I'm very fortunate that I have some good friends who are incredible at it, which makes it quite demotivating to get started because you look over my friend Mark. Mark's shoulder and you see what he produces, and you're like, I don't even know if I should even bother starting on this because. But I'd love to have a go, and I will. I've got a friend who rides a. Who does a mountain biking YouTube channel, and he said I can come and he can be my test subject. I'm gonna. [00:16:07] Speaker A: What's the. What's that YouTube channel? I do a fair bit of mountain biking. [00:16:11] Speaker B: I think it's. We. We ride bikes. I think if you Google David Arthur, he's. He's a really good lad. [00:16:18] Speaker A: I'll have to check it out. Yeah, I do. So I don't do a lot of paid photography work anymore, but the work that I do do. One of the clients is a mountain biking publication, Hybrid Photo Video for those guys. So, yeah, that's. That's one of my things. So I'll have to. I'll have to check him out. [00:16:36] Speaker B: Yeah, he's good. [00:16:40] Speaker A: Very cool. Yeah, I think it's. It's something that. It's creeping in more and more. Like video is not something I ever did. Was always primarily photo. And I wanted to get into it. And for years I kind of hesitated and I asked someone, actually a photographer that helped us get our camera strap brand off the ground a little bit. A photographer by the name of Jared Singh, who is a Perth photographer that also shoots video for a heap of stuff. But at the time, he was doing a lot of live music video. He's following a band, I think they're called. Yeah, a band called Passenger. He was following around Europe on a tour and doing video and photo for them. And I asked him about video and I was asking him about, like, rigs and all the accessories that you need and all this stuff. And this was kind of more. When it was. I think he was shooting with a 5D Mark 4 or something. So it was Just before mirrorless became a thing. And he, he just said to me, he's like, dude, what? Like you're overthinking it. He's like, they're just photos that move. Like just, he's like, just do what you normally do, but press the record button. He's like, it's not that complicated. And it. Obviously it is more complicated than that. But, um, it did slow me because I, I hadn't shot anything. I just kept googling all these different things that you had to buy to be able to shoot video. And he was like, just shoot some video. Like, it's not that. Anyway, it was very interesting. [00:18:07] Speaker B: It's. It's difficult, isn't it? It's difficult to actually put yourself out there and, and you, when you consider your, the level you operate in your comfort zone in doing stills photography and you want to operate on that same level before you put yourself out there on video. But when you think how many hours you have spent behind the camera learning that on stills, you've got, you know, you'd have to spend all of your free time just shooting nothing, doing video, just, just to get yourself to that same point. [00:18:38] Speaker A: Yeah, you're going to be starting further back, but you got to start somewhere, I guess. And that's the exact. I guess that's what he was trying to tell me was, hey dude, just, just do something. And a comment here from Dennis Smith. I don't know if you've heard of Dennis Smith. The School of Light. He does light painting which is done with F1 cars and some motorsport cars. I don't know if you've seen his work before. Very, very cool photographer. But yeah, he's just written video is just 25 photos a second. That's the best way to think about it. [00:19:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:12] Speaker A: And yeah, that's cool. Definitely agree. Okay, cool. So tell me more, tell me about how were you able to get your first. Like when did you go from it being a passion and a hobby to like getting paid to do this? Do you remember what your first paid job was in automotive or motorsport? [00:19:34] Speaker B: So I did I proper, proper paid work. I sort of separate between getting my first paid job because I did a few little jobs for friends of friends and bits and bobs who happen to race and that kind of thing. But you know, that was covering my few fuel bills and things like that. I wasn't going to earn a living from it. My first proper paid work was there was a chap who was doing the championship photography for Weck and he used to take People who are very green, very inexperienced and would put them in his team and he would pay you pittance. But you got a lot of experience, you got to do this championship and it was pittance for what he should have been paying. It was enough to actually scrape together a living. So that was my first proper job. My. Probably my. I was thinking about this, my sort of, what do they call it, the butterfly effect or, like sliding doors type moment for me, which led to my. Probably 80% of my work from this point was meeting a chap called Drew Gibson, motorsport photographer based in London, UK. I met him at a race called the Dubai 24 Hours. And I just bumped into him trackside. I knew of him, this is probably in 2012, I reckon I was there on a bit of a jolly because it used to be a very cheap race to do because you could fly to dubai for about £250 back then. And I had a mate who lived in Dubai, so I'd stay with him. So it was a good, good way of getting to go and do some cheap international photography. And, yeah, I just bumped into Drew trackside. I knew who he was because back then we all used Twitter. We didn't have Instagram, wasn't really a thing so much in 2012. I don't think Drew was even on it then. Said hello, didn't really. Just passing comments, sort of thing polite to each other, said hello, moved on. Next year, when I was working in WEC through this other chap I mentioned previously, John Drew was there working with his client, Aston Martin, and he sort of. We got to know each other a little bit better. We went for some drinks and stuff back in the UK and he started. He asked me if I wanted to do some work for him covering his client, the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia Championship, which is a little one make series, the races in some really obscure places in Asia. And I did three, three, four, five races for him. Doing that must have done a passable job because he then said he knew next year he was going to have the contract for the new Ford gt. I might be getting my years mixed up now, I think about it, but broadly speaking, he knew he'd have the new. The contract for the new Ford that was coming into the wec, so he needed to find someone to look after Aston Martin. So once he was comfortable, he'd seen my work that I was doing for WEC and he had worked with me on this Porsche Cup Asia work. So he said, you want to come and do it? I was like, obviously, yes, And I still work for Drew now. He's my biggest single biggest client. So when. Quite often when I say I work for Aston Martin Porsche, I do work for them, but it is through Drew in a lot of. A lot of those cases. I, yeah. Been working with him now for 10, 10, 12 years. However long that's been. [00:23:48] Speaker A: That is my. [00:23:49] Speaker B: That was my sort of pivotal moment, was meeting Drew and him not thinking I was a complete and taking a chance on me. [00:23:59] Speaker A: That's. That is amazing way to build. Yeah. Essentially an entire business. Well, an entire relationship out of. Out of that moment. That's. [00:24:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:24:10] Speaker A: Just shows it doesn't matter. Like, it doesn't matter where you are or. Or who you're meeting. It's like, do your best and just. [00:24:16] Speaker B: Be nice to people and get to know who they are and. And all the rest of it. Like, you don't know. It's so true of our. It's. It's the advice that we always give to people that ask how to get into it is start at the bottom, meet people. They'll be heading the same direction as you. They want to become better at what they're doing. They'll take you with you if you do a good job and if you get on with them and you'll come across people, you know later in life. Like, you'll bump into people in a random paddock somewhere and be like, oh, I haven't seen you since Formula Ford in brands hatch in 2009 or something. And you're like, oh, yeah, and now I'm the press officer for this championship or something. And straight away you've got that introduction. [00:25:06] Speaker A: So that's it. You never know who you're chatting to and like I say, where they might be in the future when your paths cross again. So, yeah, always got to do your best and be nice. Andrew. Andrew hall says more than a passable job. He also says that Drew and Nick are like a typical married couple. Is that true? [00:25:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it's probably fair. [00:25:32] Speaker A: How is that? You guys. You guys bicker a lot, banter a lot. Like, what does he mean by that? [00:25:39] Speaker B: Yeah, all of that. We travel a lot together. We spend not so much these at the moment with the championships we do, but we've done some years where we've done two or three championships together, so we spend 30 weeks a year traveling together. So you've got to get on with someone. By the same token, we both know how to push each other's buttons and it's. But, yeah, he's. He's a Good, mate. And we get on, get on. Well, we work, work well together, which is the main, the main thing. [00:26:16] Speaker A: What's the, what's the travel like? Like, what's. What does your schedule look like for each year, the average week? [00:26:26] Speaker B: So a normal event would. If you took a sort of normal flyaway event, then we'll travel on a Tuesday or Wednesday to be. You're trying to be on site for the Thursday. So if you're flying to Japan for us, that's a Tuesday leave. If I'm going to. I'm going to Belgium next week. That's just a. Actually that's a different. That would be a Wednesday leave because it's only a day of travel, but it's Thursday. You do setup shots, cars being scrutineered. People, you know, ideally you're doing sponsorship photography, you know, logo people have odd requests. We've got new water bottles, we've got. I don't know, people think of all sorts of weird things. Ideally all that stuff happens on the setup day or one of the practice days. Get out of the way. [00:27:25] Speaker A: So on. Like a setup day. So on the Thursday, someone says, hey, we've got new water bottles. And you're trying to get around and just get sort of general pre race shots. Are you delivering any photos on that day? Is anything having to go through to people ready for delivery, like immediately or within hours or. Yeah. How does that work? [00:27:47] Speaker B: Yeah, our turnaround is. Is hours rather than. Certainly by the end of every day. Everything shot that day would be delivered by the end of every day. [00:27:59] Speaker A: Everything. [00:28:00] Speaker B: But ideally it's not being left more than a couple of hours. Yeah, yeah. So then Friday you've got cars on track for the first time. So on our. In a WEC race, you'd be doing two free practices. They're 90 minutes each. So you've got all that track time. But then you'll also have pit stop practices. Drivers doing seat fits where they're. They'll be fully suited up and they're getting in and out the car to check if their seat fits properly and all that sort of good opportunity to mop up. Sort of easy, easy to capture portraits because you've got. Your championship has three, three drivers per car. So if you imagine you're shooting, I think we, we shoot 20ish cars, maybe a bit less than that. 18, 20 cars. Then you've got three drivers, so you've got 60 drivers. You're trying to get, you know, not just a picture of, you're trying to get nice pictures of so if you've. Then if you're given a situation where you know those three guys are going to be in the same place, you take it. So, yeah, the seat fits are really good for that. Same with pit stop practice. The drivers all practice with the mechanics because they have like a real sequence. They have to all do their bits in the right order so as not to get in each other's way. Saturday is another free practice, another one hour of free practice and then qualifying. Sunday's your race, which is normally actually the easy day by that point, because you've kind of done all the heavy lifting all the previous days. You're just there to sort of capture the story, shoot what you see kind of thing. Normally quite a late night getting edited, and then Monday, travel back and then if you're into another event, Tuesday you leave again. [00:30:07] Speaker A: Oh, man. [00:30:09] Speaker B: Wednesday you leave. So it can be. Yeah, can be intense. [00:30:14] Speaker A: How many weekends like that a year would you be doing, roughly? [00:30:19] Speaker B: Normally about 20, 25 a year, something like that. I try not to do more than that. I could take on a lot more than that, but it doesn't fit with my. My life. Yeah. Been having children and stuff makes it challenging. [00:30:42] Speaker A: It's. Yeah, it sounds like a lot of time away from home, that's for sure. Especially if they. And how many of those would be back to back? [00:30:50] Speaker B: Quite a few will be double, will be two weeks back to back. There will be quite often back. End of the year we do a race called Macau, which often is back to back with the last race of WEC and with the sort of geography doesn't make any sense to go from Bahrain, where the WBC final will be back home to stay there for a day to fly to Macau, which is Hong Kong. So quite often you'll go from Bahrain to Hong Kong. And then I think last year we had a race after we had a double header one year at Macau that often seems to turn into a triple header for some reason. It's often three weeks back to back. But I don't do more than three weeks back to back. Is. Is my limit. It's asking too much of everyone at home. [00:31:46] Speaker A: That's a lot of time away from home, especially if then there's only, you know, a week or two and then you're back at it again somewhere else. Yeah. Bruce Moyles in the chat, he says sounds hectic. It definitely does. And this is a good question. James said. James Barraclor. Barraclor, he says, who is editing. That's what I wanted to know. So yeah. What's the post production look like for that fast turnaround? [00:32:12] Speaker B: So we edit our own, our own work each. So when I, when I'm talking about wheat, I should explain as well because our son is sane. So I work with Drew and then in wec there are four of us now. So there's another chap called Michele Scudiero, probably completely bastardizes her name there, but we know that next time I see him and Al Staley, who is another UK based freelance photographer. So yeah, we all work together on wec. We're not in an agency as such. We're sort of freelance photographers who work for Drew and his clients. And yeah. So once everything comes in, you're responsible for your own photos and delivering them to the clients. You generally will have a plan. We don't want to be sat on photos for, you know, half a day if it's important. If it's a picture of a water bottle, then it can just wait until everything's getting done at the end of the day. But if it's. If you just had qualifying and you need to get those pictures turned around quickly because they need to send a press release with the result, the results and those are the pictures to go with it. So you'll organize yourselves, you'll say, are you. When you do quality, you sort of divide the garages amongst you say, oh well, Drew's team got pole position. He goes and edits. We'll cover the press conference or the second part of qualifying because they split the classes of cars and you just, you just work together. You have a plan. But yeah, we, we do our own editing. [00:34:01] Speaker A: What does your editing look like? Like how, how much attention? Obviously you're probably going to give more attention to some images than others, depending on what they, what you think they're for and, and what the level of that image is. But like, what does it look like? What's using Lightroom any ever Photoshop, is it? [00:34:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Overall. Yeah, shoot raw for everything. Our sort of USP is that we take great care over how the images look, which sounds stupid, but there you do get a lot of photographers who are just churning stuff out and it's almost off the back of the camera or, you know, a bit of contrast and send it. We're. We take as much care as we can afford on the image editing. So yeah, my. I use Photo Mechanic to cull the images, which is a quite basic sort of image selection tool. And then that, then I take them into Lightroom. I will use Photoshop, but only for Removing if there's sort of a Marshall or something in the background that's bright orange tabard. Because we sort of sell ourselves as being. I don't know quite how you describe it, like the sort of. We're not selling press photography, we're selling, you know, pretty, pretty marketing pictures. So removing a chap in the background in an orange tabard is sort of within the remit. I'm not going to go fully, you know, no new backgrounds or anything, but that's. Yeah. So I'll dip into Photoshop for that kind of thing. Yeah. Otherwise just. Just Lightroom pretty much. [00:35:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Just general. And you have a sort of a style that you stick to for most images. [00:35:52] Speaker B: Yeah. I would like to think pretty neutral. I don't go too crazy on, you know, the black. Blacks are fairly black and, you know, it's not got too much hue one way or another. I don't, I don't use presets. So it's. I would like to think fairly honest to what it looked like at the time. There's always a little bit of salt and pepper and, you know, encouraging sunsets in the right direction. But yeah, nothing, nothing that no one else isn't doing. [00:36:26] Speaker A: Particularly obviously in that time frame as well. It's not like you can spend 10 minutes of photo mucking around with all of it because. Because you would just never get the images through in time. [00:36:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And because the. The weather, because we have so many cars to shoot, you quite often have to stay for a little while to try and capture all of the cars at one spot before you move. So you actually, even when you. You cull it down to the images you've got, the lighting from the first frame you took to the last one doesn't match. So you couldn't actually just copy and paste even those adjustments. You still have to go through and make individual adjustments to each image. So it's. There's kind of no way to cheat it, I don't think, anyway, not to do it properly. [00:37:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:16] Speaker B: Have you. [00:37:17] Speaker A: Actually, I've got a question in a second. But first, have you ever tried any of the AI Lightroom sort of preset editing tools or anything like that? [00:37:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:37:27] Speaker A: Played with one called Image in. You're supposed to sort of do batch process based on, you know, you train it on your own image library. Have you ever tried that? [00:37:35] Speaker B: I did try Imagen and I have to say I was quite impressed. It's. And it's sort of true of all of the AI stuff like on the camera and this sort of editing. It's good to a point, but you still have to babysit it. Therefore, I'm not actually sure if you can't 100% depend on it, you can't be hands off. Therefore, it kind of still requires an amount of your energy to oversee it. An image in particular was quite expensive per image and the sort of volume of images we do actually made it not. You know, if it was the difference between us getting to leave the tracker 9:00 in the evening and midnight, then I'm sure it had. It might have its value. But yeah, I trolled it last winter. I didn't. It wasn't quite there yet. [00:38:31] Speaker A: But yeah, I had a similar experience, trialed it both with weddings, which was something I used to do quite a bit, and also trialed it with mountain bike photography and had a similar experience. I found that it was mainly just kind of adjusting my kind of standard preset, mainly tweaking white balance and a couple of things, but not. Not taking things to where I would normally do it most of the time. And then like you say at that point, you're kind of like, wow, I could probably just throw my standard preset on and then start just, just chipping away at the images one by one and tweaking them the way I would do it and it. And you sort of had to do that afterwards anyway, so was it really worth it? Yeah, I had a very, very similar experience, but. So that's the sort of stuff that you do keep up with that kind of thing. Just always looking for new techniques, new tools. What can you do to make things more efficient, faster. [00:39:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I like my tech. I think my product design background just means I like cameras and kit and I'm not, not one to jump at buying new kit for the sake of it, but I like to understand if someone said to me, held a gun to my head and said, what would you buy right now? But I just like to have that answer. I'm just intrigued. Perfect. [00:39:56] Speaker A: What. What would you buy right now? [00:39:59] Speaker B: It was my own money. I'd want to have a try with Nikon, I think. [00:40:04] Speaker A: Really? [00:40:05] Speaker B: Yeah. They seem to represent great value. I see a lot of people doing motorsport stuff and they seem the. For us, the sort of embody. With mirrorless, the biggest challenge has been shooting slow shutter speeds is the evf, the way that different manufacturers display slow shutter speeds through the evf. And I've never used Nikon mirrorless, so I don't know if it is mega or not, but I look at a lot of Guys who are using Nikon mirrorless and they seem to be getting some very impressive low shutter speed images which is where certainly Canon seems to be a challenge. I think you get used to whichever system you've got because they're all a bit different and I think you need to live with it for a bit to get used to it. But yeah, I, I certainly want to try Nikon. I priced, I changed my main body recently, both of my bodies to A1 Mark II and so it wasn't a cheap exercise. So I had a bit of a look around to see what the other options were and the Z9, the value for money that represents compared to all the other, you know, R3 or the A12, it seems much, much cheaper. [00:41:36] Speaker A: The Z9 is. It's probably due for an update in the next year or so. But yeah, it's an exceptional body for that kind of money. Yeah, it. So you're using Sony, full Sony kit and, and you've switched both bodies to the most recent. The, the A12. Were you shooting the A1, the original A1 for both bodies prior to that? [00:42:00] Speaker B: Sort of, but not quite. I was on A nine Mark one which I had had since. And we were saying before the Show, I think 20, 2017, 2018, I'm not sure. And I had a pair of A9s which I switched that I bought when I switched from Canon and I was still using those up until October last year and then I finally killed one of them and I knew I'd been given the heads up that a 1 mark 2 was coming so. But I basically needed a camera to see me through for three months. So I bought a used A1 and I hate saying it sounds ridiculous in a first world problem, but I hate having mismatched bodies. Yeah, because you just. With our, with us, the more you change lenses because we're trackside and there's cars kicking up dust and stuff. As soon as you start changing lenses and bodies and stuff, you just fill the sensor full of dust and then that hits you on the end of the day when you're retouching and you're trying to take thousands of dust spots out. So I bought a second A one Mark one to go with it with help of my local camera shop who are very generous to me and yeah, knowing full well that I would possibly want a 1 mark II when it came out and if I didn't I'll just stick with the A1s which I, I didn't really want the resolution or anything. They were just sort of the cameras that were. Well, I didn't want a 9 Mark III. [00:43:41] Speaker A: That's what I was about to ask. Did you. Did you look at that? Did you test it? What was your thoughts and why? [00:43:47] Speaker B: Yeah, Sony loaned me one for a month to play with. Great, great camera. The sensor is great for some people, but not for. Not for me. The is the. The biggest issue I had was the bottom ISO performance. I have to turn my screensaver off in a second. The bottom ISO performance, I think it was native 250 ISO on the low end and then expands down to 125 ISO. But if I filter in Lightroom by ISO on my catalog, if I put 50 ISO in, there are hundreds of thousands of images that are shot at 50 ISO. Like I. I live at 50 ISO because. So it's one of the issues actually with Sony. Sony system. The Sony system, all the lenses are f16 apart from 200 f22, which for us, if I'm shooting in midday in Bahrain, if I want to shoot 15th of a second F22 on the 7200, I need ISO 50 to balance that. So I don't have time to be popping an ND filter on. I have ND filters. I have carried them around the world for the last decade and I cannot think of a time that I've used them. I still have them, don't worry. Why bother carrying them? Because I never use them. I have a polarizer fitted all the time, so I've got an extra stop that I'm losing with the polarizer. But there's still 125th ISO is not usable. Unfortunately for my. My job toyed with variable polarizer, variable nds on it and things like that. But it was all just too much for a compromise in the end. [00:45:48] Speaker A: Just gonna bring up some of your images now. I don't know if you can see these well enough. Just these thumbnails. Is there any images that are in this folder? That would be an example of this for people that are watching. That example of a moment when you need to go to ISO. [00:46:07] Speaker B: There's a pan down here somewhere. A bit further down, I think. There you go. The bottom. Middle on the bottom. This so it looks like a big blur. Yeah, that one there. [00:46:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:46:27] Speaker B: So that'll be a fifth or an eighth of a second. It's a technique called a shutter drag. So you. You basically want to pan the camera with the car for a portion of the exposure and then you accelerate the camera past the car to give the sort of effect of the colors. Tailing off the back of it. Yeah, that will be a fifth or an eighth of a second, something like that. So it's without, without 50 ISO you can't achieve that. [00:47:03] Speaker A: And, and limited to. So all. I didn't realize that. Are you saying all Sony lenses are limited to f16 maximum aperture or just the one. [00:47:12] Speaker B: Most of their portrait lenses are. And then I think the 400 I think is F22. The 7200 is F22. But okay, if you compare that to a lot of the Canon stuff, a lot of the Canon lenses would be F22 or certainly were when I was shooting on them. [00:47:33] Speaker A: What, what are your go to lenses? Just while we've got these images up, let's, let's, let's look through a few and just talk about what, what sort of gear you were using and even potentially where it was. [00:47:42] Speaker B: And so I've got a, if I start from the smallest, I've got a 14, 14 mil Sigma Art 1.8 lens which is mega but heavy. And it's pretty much used for a single one picture a year or maybe two, which is one particular corner at a track called SPA where you can stand on the inside and you can stand. There's a wall so you can pretty much stand on the apex of the corner. So you shoot on a super wide lens just to. Actually there's a picture they're taken with it. The left of that guy running. If you go up a few, up another row. See the buildings to the left? Yeah. So that's on the 14 I think. Ah, so that, that kind of thing. But they're so infrequent that you are carrying it around the world just to shoot a couple of frames a year. But there's no other lens to do it on. Yeah, so I've got that, I've got a 24 mil art. The 1.4, not art, sorry, 24 mil G master. [00:48:55] Speaker A: Okay. [00:48:56] Speaker B: I've got a 50 mil Zeiss, the 1.4 that I've just changed for the Sigma 1.5 mm 1.2. That's been my treat to myself this month. I then have a 105F one. Four Sigma art, which I love. I had it on Canon and I just love the, love the look of that lens again. I've always had one since it came out. [00:49:33] Speaker A: 105 is such a great focal length. Myself and my business partner Jim, we both bought 105mil 1.4 Nikon lenses actually which was on the F mount. They don't have one for the new Zed mount yet, but the 105 1.4 and actually shot the last time I went to the Fink Desert race. I shot some images on that at 1.4 of the trophy trucks and stuff and they just. It. It's an insane lens. It. [00:50:02] Speaker B: Yeah, it was my attempt when I switched to Sigma to replace my. I had a Canon 201.8. [00:50:12] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:50:13] Speaker B: And no one, I don't think there's a 200F2 equivalent anyway on Sony. So it was sort of my. My solution to. That gives a sort of similar. Similar look and it weighs about a quarter of what that lens did as well. Yeah. Then I've got a 7202.8 Sony and then a 400 mil 2.8 again Sony and then a pair of a 1 mark 2s and then I've still got my a 9 mark 1s. One of those comes with me to back up in case I throw one of the cameras down the road or something. Or something happens. So that's still. It's not getting any time off for having done a. Whatever seven, eight years of work. It's not. It's not done quite yet. [00:51:11] Speaker A: So that was the one that didn't. Didn't die. [00:51:14] Speaker B: I fixed the one that died as well. So that's now the family camera that doesn't get any time off either. If anything, that has a worse life now. [00:51:26] Speaker A: Treated hard. [00:51:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:30] Speaker A: Did you look at the shutter count on either of those cameras at all? Do you have any idea whether they. [00:51:36] Speaker B: Can'T give you the digital. Sony can't give you the digital shutter count, so I shoot purely on the electronic shutter unless I need to go below fifth of a second. But Sony have told me that they can get the digital shutter count off it if they send it back to the factory. So I've asked if they can send one of them back to the factory because I reckon they're 10 million plus. You reckon each body? Yeah. [00:52:10] Speaker A: So. So what are you shooting in your average weekend, do you think, between like how many images? Between all the bodies? Any idea? [00:52:19] Speaker B: About 25,000 frames, something like that. [00:52:23] Speaker A: Wow. [00:52:24] Speaker B: Which, and to be fair, I felt when I first switched the mirrorless. I felt terrible about that because for some reason you do like you. When you're mirrored, you're sort of subconsciously not wanting to shoot too much because it kind of has a value attached to it. You're thinking, oh, you know, new shutter box or whatever. And you don't want the camera to die on event either. But then When I switched to mirrorless, I was like, why? What, what's the point? Like, if. If shooting a burst. And don't get me wrong, I'm not shooting just holding the shutter down, trying to get stuff. But if you're trying to shoot a car through a short exposure of barrier and there's a hole in it, you're trying to get the car. As soon as I hear it come in, I'll just set the shutter going because the only cost to me is having to store the images whilst I select them. There's no impact on the camera. It just makes it easier to do my job. Likewise if you're doing a start or somewhere, if there's cars hopping curbs, just, you know, why, why not? [00:53:43] Speaker A: Why is it worth missing the shot to be more selective? You know, like, is it worth not getting it? Is that kind of. That you're weighing up that, like. [00:53:54] Speaker B: And I mean, I shoot on 10 frames a second most of the time, even though the camera can do a lot more than that, because I don't believe there's much happening in those frames in between. But I'm quite happy to use twin, you know, if I need to use 20, 30 frames a second, then I will. It's just a part of the tool to do the job. [00:54:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm very similar with. Obviously, mountain bike is a very different sport to motor racing in terms of the speed, but you're also a little bit. You've got more distance between you and the subject with motorsport, so that. So that kind of speed that they can come at you on a blind. You know, if you're in a blind section or something like that, and they're coming out of nowhere, I'll only bump it up for those moments. Usually if you're shooting wide, they're going to come through so quick that 10 frames doesn't give you enough options. But most of the time, yeah, 10 or 15 is ample. If you're set up in a spot with a bit of distance between you and the subject and you can kind of track through. [00:54:58] Speaker B: Well, with your bikes, you've got, you know, stones being kicked up and bits and bobs like that. Like a lot is actually happening in that period of time. And in your 10, you know, the distance the bike covers in 10, 20, 30 frames per second, a lot more happens than a car, which certainly because we're, we're, you know, tracks actually. There's not much gravel, there's not much, not. Not a huge amount of changes. But you're just looking for that if they're bumping over the curb, you're just looking for that right moment where it's just the right height and the curb lines up nicely with the angle of the car and little details like that just gives you more options. [00:55:41] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. Actually, I'm just going to bring this down for a second. There's a couple of good questions coming in before we look through some more images. First of all, Paul Henderson says, I can't imagine calling 25,000 IMAGES250, mate. Maybe. Yeah, that's a big hurdle to jump through. At least you're doing them each day, so it doesn't fit. Like I can imagine getting to the end of the weekend and having 25,000 and having to sit down and start with that. That would be rough. But still, that's massive. You must have a very good system. James Barraclos says, how have you managed to get good and quick at culling to get the images you need? Especially when delivering straight after quality or a race. [00:56:25] Speaker B: Photo mechanic is a huge help because you have zero loading time. You just keep pushing the next arrow key and the next image loads. Full screen, full resolution. You can just see what you need to see to achieve, to quickly judge if that's a good or a bad image. You, I sort of find you kind of have a feel for where you're expecting the good images to start. So you're sort of going through images just for the sake of it. And it's only if something sort of stands out, like, I don't know, a flame from an exhaust or something like that might catch your eye and you're like, oh, that one's worth looking at. Even though the car's not framed quite like I was hoping it to be. So there's a. There's an awful lot of those 25, 000 or whatever. And it might be a lot, it might be less than that on some events, but broadly speaking, on a sort of three, four day event, that's what it would be. There's a lot of those that you won't need to even look too hard at because you can see from the thumbnail that the car's not where you want it and you, you just get a feel for it. I get it when clients are trying to look over my shoulder to sort of. If they're trying to select an extra image out of a sequence or something and I'm flicking through and they're like, can you slow down? Because I just can't see what you're looking at. But you just get used to. Is as simple as that. [00:57:58] Speaker A: Do you look through each image full size or are you scanning thumbnails and clicking and then enlarging the one that you think is the keeper? Or is it a bit of a hybrid approach of both? [00:58:13] Speaker B: Hybrid, yeah. I can show you. I don't know if we can work out the screen sharing thing. [00:58:17] Speaker A: Oh maybe. Yeah, if you can try and bring it up, that'd be cool. [00:58:23] Speaker B: How do I. [00:58:26] Speaker A: There should just be a. Yeah, present button and it'll just tell you you can do screen or like a window. A window or full screen. And you probably want window because then you can just choose the. I think it says window. [00:58:43] Speaker B: Is that working? [00:58:46] Speaker A: Yes. Hang on. Bring that up. Yeah, there it is. [00:58:51] Speaker B: So is it good? There we go. [00:59:10] Speaker A: Certainly all those images, the. The sex thing on the side is so tiny. [00:59:16] Speaker B: This is the sort of exciting stuff we get to do shooting people's hospitality units. [00:59:21] Speaker A: It's not all. It's not all fast cars going around corners and stuff. [00:59:25] Speaker B: No, it's is certainly not. Let's get to some more exciting. [00:59:29] Speaker A: This is interesting. Okay, so you. Do you use colors or star ratings or both? What's your. What's. Yeah, tell me about how you organize your images. [00:59:36] Speaker B: So on. On these, if I get up some track photos, I didn't go on track on this. Some great pictures of the floor as well there I've got many. Got extensive archive of pictures of the floor from all over the world if anyone is looking to buy those. So yeah, I select, I give a rating and you just hit a number and it gives a color rating. So I'm literally here where we shoot so many other cars on this start, if you try to sort of track with each individual car, you would miss the car that is going behind it. So for example here I need that car. Then I need that car and I need that car and I need that car and I need that car and I need that car and then I need those two cars as well. So you just end up sort of machine gunning it. But in that instance, because you're shooting at 2,000ths of a second, there's really no downside to doing that. It's not an exciting picture, it's just representing the start and how busy the start is. [01:01:04] Speaker A: Yeah. So on these we're only seeing. On this screen we're only seeing thumbnails that you're clicking through. Yeah. Have you got it like a. Would you normally have this alongside like a large preview window or something that's showing you the, the full size image too. [01:01:18] Speaker B: If I can. If I can just do my whole window, maybe. Hang on. If I just stop sharing for a second screen, hopefully. [01:01:37] Speaker A: Oh, that might have us in it. Oh, no, hang on. [01:01:40] Speaker B: Does that let you see the full window now? [01:01:42] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, now we got the full. Yeah, yeah, Very cool. Right, so you would. So we're on thumbnails now. [01:01:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:01:51] Speaker A: And then you would. Then you would punch in and. [01:01:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm kind of going through. And I'm kind of looking for. I like that because the cars are overlapped in a sort of similar way and it. And I'm also in my back of my head. This will be cropped to 19 by 6 or 6 by 19. So I'm thinking actually I need to keep. In this instance, I want both of the Porsches to be in the frame. So once I get to that point it's probably not going to be. It's probably going to be a bit wide for a crop that's going to get put on it by the social media team. Yeah, but you can kind of. Yeah. Skip through. Like I say, there's a lot of stuff here that needn't be shot, but it's kind of shot because it's easier to shoot it than not shoot it almost. And that's kind of the game that I'm in. Like I'm there to produce the photos. It kind of doesn't matter how I have to go about doing that. [01:02:52] Speaker A: How long are you keeping images that aren't used? [01:02:58] Speaker B: I will select off my raws. So these are all the raws that got taken forward and then I will go back the day after the race or on the, on the Monday, on the travel day normally and I'll make a broader selection of non client cars and then that's what I keep. I'll just delete all the other. For all the other raws. So you'll. [01:03:24] Speaker A: You'll delete them like within the next week or two or something. Like fairly quick after the. [01:03:29] Speaker B: Probably quicker than that because I'll need the hard drive space. So that's. I mean these are my raws that I've taken forward at this point. So it's. So how many it was from 507 roars got taken forward from the race. [01:03:53] Speaker A: Last weekend from the total weekend or from. [01:03:58] Speaker B: From one. [01:03:58] Speaker A: From one day. Yeah, yeah. [01:04:01] Speaker B: So quite often as well, if I. If it's something where I'm not 100 sure if it will work, I kind of put it into lightroom and see does actually the sharpness sort of come up a bit with a bit of editing because it's not. Doesn't quite look sharp enough from the preview, but sometimes once you've got a bit of contrast on it, it'll actually sharpen up nicely. So might give myself different options of the same picture to sort of edit and see. Like here, for example, I've sort of taken forward to Lightroom three versions of the same picture just to see which one I prefer when it's edited. [01:04:48] Speaker A: Very cool. I love hearing the thought process behind it because I've done it a million times before, but never with that kind of subject matter and never with that volume of images, that's for sure. And it's always interesting to hear some people edit in, other people edit out. You know, some people just remove the bad photos, which obviously with, with automotive racing is. Is probably a bad idea because you'd be pressing X on, yeah, 20 something thousand photos, you know, as opposed to just editing in the good ones. [01:05:21] Speaker B: But yeah, I do think I'm unusual. I'm sure if you're like Andrew, for example, he's obviously from a film background. I just don't think it's built into him, I would imagine, to shoot that quantity of images, whereas I'm just not fussed by it. I've never shot film in my life, always been digital, so it's just, it's just how I operate. Lots of people, like for example, my colleague Drew, he shoots single frames when he's doing pans for the most part. So when he's trying to do very slow pans, he'll just do a single frame. He finds it easier to focus on just getting that one frame. Whereas I shoot bursts of images. Again, just the technique I find delivers the most sharp images for me. [01:06:16] Speaker A: When you're shooting pans, what is it? Purely subjective, the point where you decide that it's sharp enough or that it's appropriate. I always often have that thing in my mind where I'm like, what needs to be sharp for this to be an image that works? And is it just something that I have a gut feel on when I see it? Or is there a point where for you working with logos and brands are being presented on these cars? You know, how many of those logos need to be sharp for it for you to say, okay, that's that works? Or is it just a subjective kind of gut feeling per image? [01:06:57] Speaker B: I think it's almost a thing that is dictated by the client you're shooting for. So I would never give one of Our manufacturer clients just fifth of a second art I would there they're going to want a range like hundredth second pans where nose to tail the car's sharp. Every sponsor on the side is sharp. Something that they can give their sponsors and be like here you go, here's we've raced last weekend with your sponsorship on the side of the car you can see it clear as day, like it's useful to them but then you're also there to make the cars look like they're exciting. So you know, a bit of action, a bit of movement. There's definitely a line but I think it, I think it's subjective and it depends who, who the end client is. If it's going to be used at Instagram size as well you get away with a lot as well so rule is not to let that inform what you take forward because you can guarantee if you put something in that you're like if it's used right, this will look good. If it's used wrong, you know, you, you turn up at Le Mans and it's on the side of a three story hospitality unit and it's not sharp and you just, you got to look at it all week knowing it's not sharp. So if it can't be used in the worst possible situation then it doesn't go to the client. [01:08:35] Speaker A: But yeah, I think that's a good rule because that is. I've felt that in the past an image that you let through somehow ends up being the one that gets shared the most or pushed out in the world and you're like oh, excuse that one. Yep, few good comments on here. Bruce Moore says Photo Mechanic is the bomb. I agree. I also tried. We experimented a bit with Fast Raw Viewer which was pretty cool. I've actually found Lightroom fast enough now for what I do but it's certainly not at that level. But their embedded preview library sort of scrolling now that brings the preview in and I think handles it in a very similar way way to Photo Mechanic I found to be fast enough for me and then it avoids that kind of having to man. Yeah, back and forth. But yeah, Photo Mechanic is definitely the king when it comes to fast color images. [01:09:35] Speaker B: A lot for the IPTC sort of stuff. Whilst we don't caption or keyword individual individual images we still apply on the import which I appreciate Lightroom can do but I've always found Lightrooms IPTC handling is a bit cack handed like it just doesn't make a lot of sense and I just find it, it's just useful. It's like finder that works with pictures like you can. We also have Dropbox Desktop and Google Drive Desktop integrated into it so we can just drag client images straight into their delivery folders. So it's cool. It speeds up our, that's our, our main delivery. It's Dropbox and Google Drive now that speeds up our delivery time because it, it's sounds stupid but all those tiny little savings if you can save 30 seconds on each client and you've got 10 clients and you're delivering three or four, five times a day like it adds up and it gets you home a bit, a bit quicker at the end of the day. So yeah it's all those sort of marginal gains. [01:10:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Trying to optimize everything when you're dealing with that many images and yeah. Rick Nelson says I can't even keep up with the car that you're picking. Yeah it's like she's going fast. I can see how the clients would be like looking over your shoulder going slow down. Andrew hall says, I'm so old I can only count in batches of 36. And David de Parker says I have no nostalgia for film or 36 frames. So obviously embracing digital as well. Bruce Moyle says I've always selected everything and rejected from the start then unflag anything that seems good, good found useful for a couple of thousand images at a go. So I don't even know if I understand that I've selected everything. So you reject all your images and then opt back in? [01:11:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:11:46] Speaker A: Interesting. Interesting. I've got a weird, I got a weird system. People would probably think it's crazy but I just do. I don't know why and where I picked it up but i3 star. I3 star any image that I think is good and then when I'm going through an editing it can then go up to a four or five star. Five star if I think it's like port possibly portfolio worthy or just like hero image worthy. 4 stars like maybe you know, depending on the edit, maybe whatever worthy. And then if it's, if it's not going to go to the client it goes down to a two star but I still won't delete that. A two star, a two star will get saved from, from the eventual like clear off the hard drive and I then I just select one star or lower and, and clear all of that once it's gone past the point. I don't. This is where we're probably different. Maybe I don't clear Anything until. Because I've got a lot more time and I'm using a lot less hard drive space, doing a lot less work. I'll leave it sort of sit for a while until I'm satisfied that they're not going to come back and be like, oh, actually, did you have one of those? Or something like that? And then I'll clear everything. When we were doing weddings professionally, it was like we kept all images raw for a minimum of 12 months after the wedding date, just in case. And then after that we slowly sort of paired down our backup over time. But, yeah, it's super interesting hearing workflows and stuff like that. I guess the more images you're dealing with, the more optimized it needs to be. [01:13:31] Speaker B: Yeah. And everyone just finds their way. That works. Between the four of us that work for these events, we all have slightly different workflows. Drew still edits on Camera Raw on Photoshop. Michaela uses Lightroom, quite similar system to me and Al. He's. He's always worked for photo agencies, so he's Photoshop and Lightroom. Sorry, Photoshop and Camera Raw still. So, yeah, we're all a bit different. [01:14:04] Speaker A: When you're delivering files, do you deliver just like a full resolution JPEG or is it set at a certain pixel size or something? [01:14:12] Speaker B: No, full resolution, although it still doesn't prevent the inevitable. Have you got it in full resolution emails that you always relentlessly get? This one's only eight megabytes. It can't be the full resolution. Yes, it is. It's just compressed a little bit. Don't need 25 megabit for megabyte files. [01:14:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Do you use a compression. Do you use JPEG Mini or anything like that to compress your JPEGs built into Lightroom? [01:14:46] Speaker B: 80% on the compression on the. [01:14:49] Speaker A: Have you ever tried JPEG Mini? [01:14:51] Speaker B: No. No, I haven't. [01:14:53] Speaker A: Oh, it's very. It's very cool. [01:14:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:14:55] Speaker A: Should give it a whirl. Yeah. I don't know if. I don't know if Lightroom's implemented something like that into their JPEG output, but does a fantastic job, we found. I don't know, it's. Yeah, I've had it. Yeah. It basically, it does what it says on the, on the tin. It. It makes your JPEG smaller without losing any data. Just makes them faster to transfer and, and smaller to. To store. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've loved it. Yeah. So it, it. It has its own standalone thing that you can just drop them into and it'll just optimize wherever they're sitting on the hard drive. Like, you could drop your entire folder structure into it and it would just optimize them where they are. Right. But it also has a plugin that just sits in Lightroom and will optimize them on the way out of Lightroom. So they're done? Yeah. [01:15:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:15:43] Speaker A: It's very cool. Let's go back to your images because I want to hear some stories. There we go. I'm just gonna scroll through and just. I don't know if one pops out to you that you want to tell me about. Just tell me. Actually, that was a good question. I have a question on this. This. This thing's cool. This is. Is this race or practice? [01:16:12] Speaker B: That is. I think that was shot after a practice session that was at Imola last year. So the race that I just did last weekend. But the year previous, after free practice two, I think it was. But at the end of the free practices, the teams will always do a full speed pit stop because they practice, they need to practice it as much as they can. So it's just their sort of habit is whenever they finish a session, they'll do a full speed pit stop, regardless of whether they're going back out or not. And this is a good example of making sure everything's crispy. Crisp, as one of our colleagues calls it, because this ended up in the inside of the Porsche, Hospitality at Le mans was about 10 meters by 5 meters or something. Wow. Right at the staircase. We had an office at the top of the. On the second floor. So every single day I had to go up the staircase looking at this image. So I was grateful that it was. It was nice and sharp. [01:17:21] Speaker A: That's a very cool image. What. What's it like? So in this situation. So it's a full speed practice, do you need to be. How aware do you need to be of what's going on around you? How far are you from these guys when this is happening? Can you get in the way? [01:17:38] Speaker B: You can't get in the way. If you get in the way, you'll get flattened. So it's. You are inconsequential to what they are getting on with, even if it's a practice pit stop. So they will literally knock you out of the way. And the wheels they're lugging around, they make them look very light, but they're really not. But the biggest issue with this one is that I've got my back to the traffic, so I can't see what's coming up behind me, but I will. I Can't recall this exact situation, but I would have either had a car that I knew wasn't going to leave or have checked. You see the mechanics that come to the side of the, the pit lane if they're about, if they're expecting a car. So you, you just have to have your wits about you. You're listening for cars. Although a lot of our cars are now running on hybrid, so you don't actually make much or any noise in the pit lane. So you're just sort of using your judgment as to whether you think you're going to be safe for a few seconds in the middle of the pit road, pit lane. And yeah, your experience, I guess. [01:18:52] Speaker A: Yeah, it could be hectic, I bet. Are you able to be anywhere near this area during a race or is it. You can only get images like this during practice? [01:19:02] Speaker B: No, we can go during the race. You, during the race they tend to come in, in batches because they, they're all very similar cars and they're running if, if it were a pure dry session, pure dry race, they're going to pit at a similar point when they get low on fuel or when the tires are starting to cool enough. So, so you'll tend to find within two, two or three laps they all pit and the different types of cars use different amounts of fuel. So the, this is a hypercar. All the hypercars will pit within 1, 2, 3 laps of each other and then all of the GT cars will all pit within 1, 2, 3 Laps of each other. So you, you get busy periods and then it will just be completely dead for 45 minutes until the next round of pit stops kicks off. [01:19:57] Speaker A: What, what's a hypercar and how is that different? [01:20:01] Speaker B: So a Hypercar is a GT car. Looks like McLaren 720s Aston Martin Vantage that you'd see on the road with a bit of a body kit on it, bit of a wing, you know, race car version of a road car. Hypercars are broadly speaking bespoke cars for this championship. Built to a rule set. It's slightly muddied in that one of the cars this year is based off a road car. But it, it's not a road car me or use ever gonna own in our life. It's a 3 million pound hypercar that they're only making 8 of or something. So it's, you know the, these are basically bespoke race cars made for racing in this championship. They're. Yeah, they're not made to look pretty or anything. They just look. However is the most efficient way of looking for aerodynamics for the practicality. So these guys don't pit stops around them, that kind of thing. So they're race machines. [01:21:11] Speaker A: James Barraclaw wants to know, are you required to suit up with a flame proof suit in the pits? [01:21:16] Speaker B: Unfortunately, so. So we have to. Yeah, we have to wear a fire suit and we have to wear a helmet. So the fire suit is pretty ripe by the end of a Le Mans where you've been in it for about four days consecutively, you don't have to wear it trackside, but you just don't have time quite often to put it on and take it on and off. [01:21:42] Speaker A: What's it like shooting through the helmet? [01:21:46] Speaker B: I personally have bought one that sits quite high because there's nothing more annoying than them pressing on the buttons on the top of the camera and stuff like that. Mine's just a bike helmet. So it's open face. [01:22:01] Speaker A: Okay. It's open face so you don't have to have a visor on or something like that. That gets in the way. That. [01:22:05] Speaker B: Yeah, not for now anyway. The, the helmets are a pain to be honest. Like they're. I don't think they make a lot of sense. Like the, they're not going to help you in a fire. Quite the opposite. I don't think they're going to do you much good. But meant to stop you getting hit on the head with something so. [01:22:24] Speaker A: Very cool. [01:22:26] Speaker B: So I shot in Qatar a few months or so ago. That's with the dreaded star filter. [01:22:35] Speaker A: I was, I'm like, I was trying to figure out what's going on here. So you. A star filter? [01:22:40] Speaker B: Yeah, we. Qatar is a difficult track to shoot. It's a motorbike track. It's flat as anything and you're about. This is about as close as you can get to a car is just vast. Like you can't. A lot of the sort of standard head on shots that we'd normally do you just cannot do at this track. And it is so overlit with floodlights that you can leave your polarizers on. Doesn't matter. I don't know what the settings are on this one, but there'll be like daylight settings basically. So you start looking for ways to make it more interesting. So we'll break out our dodgy Amazon filters or the pots of Vaseline. Yeah, this is what we end up doing. [01:23:34] Speaker A: Oh, I like it. Great work. So that's so. So there are locations where you're like, oh, this will not be a fun. This is not a fun race. To shoot. Like, it's. It's obviously still a great, you know, great weekend, but it's not an ideal location. You got to try and make something cool out of it. [01:23:53] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's. Qatar is not an easy track to shoot. It's. Ironically, the pit lane is probably the best pit lane we shoot all year. Which makes it even worse because you're like, I don't want to go on track because what's the point? Like, you can shoot much nicer stuff in the pit lane than you can on track. But it. Yeah, it's the hand you dealt. Same for everyone. [01:24:15] Speaker A: Yeah. So then you do stuff like this and try and make the best of it. [01:24:18] Speaker B: Exactly. So that's from the pit lane in Qatar. All the smoke coming off the rear. So he's coming to. To stop. And when the cars are stopped, they over. Not overheat, but all of the temperature held in the brakes starts to burn things. All the sort of dust and rubbish they picked up. So they. They quite often smoke when they're stopped. So this is. Yeah. End of a practice session, I think. Harry Tincknall getting out of his Aston Martin. [01:24:52] Speaker A: Do you recall at all what lens that would have been shot with? [01:24:57] Speaker B: Almost certainly the 50. The 50 pretty much live on the 50. It's the 50 and something else. [01:25:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Which is now the Sigma 1.2, did you say? [01:25:10] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So this would have been on the Zeiss 1.4 at the time. [01:25:15] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, yeah. I love that you're using primes that just. And everything happens so fast. [01:25:24] Speaker B: I just, like, it's sort of. My. My look is the sort of wide open, shallow depth of field. We've got so much rubbish in. In our. At our tracks, in our backgrounds that if you shoot, you know, F4 or something for that, I mean, it's pretty clean in this example, but in another track, if you're shooting at F4, you'd have the, you know, random Italian guy smoking in the background. Like, if you're in Barcelona, to have some guy with an umbrella, like, it's just being able to separate the background is super useful. Goodwood revival last year. This is what I think. You guys think what the UK looks like all the time. [01:26:13] Speaker A: Yeah. I was going to say that's pretty. Pretty standard uk. Yeah, yeah. [01:26:18] Speaker B: Wet and raining and sunny at the same time. [01:26:20] Speaker A: At the same time. Be a. A polo match happening just off to the right or something. [01:26:25] Speaker B: Exactly, that's the one. This is a revival which we all dress up in period clothing. We all get dressed up and pretend like it's 1950 or whatever it is, but it's a really, really cool event. Three days of historic racing which sounds like the most dry, boring thing in the world. But it's just mega cars. There'll be £10 million Ferrari 250 GTOs racing other 10 million pound cars, you know, knocking into each other and stuff. And the, the owners give them over to professional racing drivers and they say go at it, like give it, you know, 10 out of 10. So it's always great racing. Normally decent ish weather for a the UK anyway. And yeah, just good, just a really good fun event. That's Goodwood Revival again off the bridge. They put a horrible bridge on the approach to turn one, which I have to confess does make it more convenient. But it ruins our start photo. But I managed to. We're not allowed on the bridge, annoyingly even I work for Goodwood and we're still not allowed on the bridge. But it did open up this rear shop which never seen anyone else do since. [01:27:52] Speaker A: It's cool. Almost drone height, you know. [01:27:54] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [01:27:57] Speaker A: Oh, I love that. [01:27:58] Speaker B: Good with revival as well. I did go to other events this year. We get nice. Do get a nice sunset. [01:28:07] Speaker A: Yeah. I love how small the cars are in that frame as well. Like I didn't actually. Didn't immediately get drawn to them. [01:28:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:17] Speaker A: Until the image loaded and then my eyes sort of wandered down into the bottom left hand corner. That's. Yeah, that's a great photo. Ah, is that the 14? [01:28:28] Speaker B: So that's. That might be on the 24 I think. Could be hard to say. Yeah, probably 24 with the bike not looking. The bike will either look tiny or huge on the 14. There's sort of no in between with that lens. [01:28:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:28:46] Speaker B: This is a Macau which is a unique event in that they race cars and bikes on the same event. So after this you'll have some touring cars going round and then after that you'll have some random local Toyota one make series and then the bikes back on again in the afternoon. So it's, it's cool. We don't get to shoot bikes very much. There's not much crossover between cars and bikes. I love Macau's good fun. It's a proper, proper race. [01:29:22] Speaker A: Proper race. Not like all these other races. [01:29:26] Speaker B: It's just not sanitized there. This, I have no idea how it's still going on, to be honest. It's for the bikes particularly is literally lethal, really. No runoff at all and they are not messing about. [01:29:47] Speaker A: Dennis. Dennis Smith says that Bike through the barrier is nuts. And I agree that is a, that is a tough shot to get. Was this something you had to spend a bit of time trying to get right? Like multiple riders had it framed up and, and trying to get it. [01:30:02] Speaker B: So I, I was working for Maau for the Grand Prix. But so we have a tabard that allows us to go anywhere that's not a specifically prohibited spot. But even so, the local police are sort of the law and order. Normally it's the sort of circuit officials would be in control, but here it's the police. So it's entirely up to the police officer that you come across whether you're allowed to stand somewhere. This was probably not a very sensible place to be anyway because it is literally if the bike clips the barrier, you know, I've got the camera held against the barrier. So I waited until I think the second to last nap or something and just went and sprayed whatever came past. Again, the beauty of flip out screens. Things that people took the mick out of me for five, six years ago whenever, when I first got my toy cameras. And I love my flip out screens because you can manual focus, get it right, you know, get the right bit of tarmac. So you know when that bike comes around, you spray at it and then you'll have a frame of it moving through the, the focused portion of the frame. Yeah, shots like that I just don't think you could do, not safely anyway, because I don't need my head anywhere near that barrier to achieve that. [01:31:31] Speaker A: Yeah, that's epic. Very, very cool. [01:31:36] Speaker B: Again, another Macau Grand Prix. That one's terrifying to do because it feels like the rear wing is going to hit you. [01:31:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Right on the edge. Split frame. So great. The light in that, that is awesome. [01:31:54] Speaker B: I love the shadow in that one with the wheel shape. [01:31:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Sexually apt photo for Bruce's question. Do you document the support crew? [01:32:12] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah, we do quite a lot with the mechanics, particularly who do the pit stops for the. Some of the teams we work with, the actual team that runs the car as opposed to the manufacturer. So we'll make sure all the mechanics have got something and you quite often get a, A guy will come up and be like, oh, I'm doing the, doing the fuel rig today, you know, because XYZ is unwell. You make sure you get some shots of me or you get the, get the guys who are on the rear wheels because it's often the front wheel guys that we shoot because you. The nicer picture generally is the front of the car and the Guys running around the front of it and you get the rear wheel guys coming. Like you never take pictures of us on the back wheels, do you? So then you're like trying to work harder to get them some nice shots of the real guys or the fuel rig guys. Always a bit buried in amongst everyone. So it's not a great picture. The guy with the fuel hose on. So you like to. We try to look after them as best we can. [01:33:19] Speaker A: That's great that they, they come up and, and mention it and ask you like, can you get a shot of me today? Oh wow. That is insane. Is that. It's almost four wheels off the ground. [01:33:32] Speaker B: Yeah, he was, he was four wheel. But I was determined to get this at a slow shutter speed because lots of people. He was doing it every single lap. I was like, I'm gonna get this at slow shutter speed because it's just again, I can't remember this if this is Mizano or Mijello, but there's just tons of rubbish in the background. So if you shoot it at like 80th of a second or something, like a bit easier. You just got Waterloo's and you know, vans and rubbish in the background. So just was determined. I think I spent a couple of. Couple of laps too long trying to get it how I once did. But he was. [01:34:13] Speaker A: But you got it. [01:34:15] Speaker B: I got it. [01:34:15] Speaker A: In the end, Paul asks Nick for panning shots at relatively low shutter speeds, does image stabilization help or does it work against you? [01:34:28] Speaker B: It depends and I couldn't tell you why. Sometimes, sometimes it feels like it is your best friend and it's magic. And then other times it's like the stabilization does not get what you're trying to do at all. And so I'll do a mixture on my stabilized, on my non stabilized lenses I turn the embody stabilization off on the camera. On my stabilized lenses I'll use a mixture of having the. The in lens stabilization on and off. They really. The stabilization tends to work on the more basic sort of shots like your 80th of a second cars 100 meters from you. Just a nice easy pan for stuff like that. It works really well for stuff where you are moving the camera at like a different rate. Like if the car's getting closer to you during the frame, it's not staying a constant distance from you. You're having to increase the camera speed to match the car's speed as it closes, as it closes that gap. And the stabilization just doesn't get it. It's trying to, it's trying to hold you back because it's going oh, he's getting away this way. I think I'm trying to frame it this way so it's. It's hit and miss. Sometimes I think it's a bit too clever for its own good because it felt. I always thought. To be honest, I always thought it was good on the Canon. I don't think the Sony systems are quite as effective but I don't know if that is true of mirrorless cameras generally now or what I need to go and I should really have a go with some other brands and compare them because I've been a few years out of practice with Canon. [01:36:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. It's very interesting. Like I say there's a lot of different things going on with in body stabilization, lens stabilization and then in the lenses there's different modes. I know on some of my Canon lenses there's different modes. I assume there is on Sony as well on some of the telephones. [01:36:42] Speaker B: Panning and you've got the dynamic mode or something I think they called it as well. [01:36:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:36:48] Speaker B: Which. So there's obviously I use panning mode for all of my work. It just. I don't. You get to know your cameras so well. Like I. I still don't know the A1s very well at the moment because I've only shot three or four events on them or something. I'm still learning them because I will get. I will know those cameras inside out in a couple of years time and you get feel for when something's working and when it's not. It's. Yeah, I use them. I use the cameras that much that I'll know straight away if I need to switch the stabilization off for a particular pan. [01:37:27] Speaker A: Are you using a monopod or anything or just fully handheld for the 400? [01:37:32] Speaker B: I have a monopod for the 7200. It's all handheld. I do think as well the stabilizations like you to be using autofocus. So I shoot back button focus and so I'm effectively manual focusing for most of my panning if the car's not changing distance and I don't think the stabilization is quite built around that. I'd love to talk to her. In fact I think I am should be going on a trip with some Sony engineers soon so hoping to pick their brains about why it doesn't seem to work quite as well if you don't use autofocus. I don't know if there's some logic applied to. [01:38:18] Speaker A: That would be super interesting if it's doing Some sort of analysis while the autofocus system is running. That's not happening when you've got your finger off the back button. Focus, you know, like that. Yeah, that would be very interesting to find out. [01:38:33] Speaker B: Be interesting. I'm looking forward to it. Like I say, I'm a bit of a nerd. My camera kit, I like talking to an engineer, so. Not sure. [01:38:44] Speaker A: You'll have to let us know. You'll have to let us know if that's. If that's what's happening or any other secrets they let you in on. Paul says fantastic info. Thanks. My hit rate, photographing vintage aircraft that shows slow shutter speeds on the R5, 100 to 500 is awful at the moment. Practice makes perfect. [01:39:07] Speaker B: And, yeah, you know, that's a big lens as well. And aircraft. I've done a little bit of aircraft at a show in the UK and they're tricky because quite often you're shooting, you know, above the. Or always, hopefully above the horizon. But it's. It's just not a natural position to be panning with an aircraft. Like it's. And they're sort of moving in different directions and not just going left and right like cars are. They're going 45 degrees up or 45 degrees down or, you know, whatever they might be doing. So it's. It's not an easy thing to photograph. Certainly not slow shutter speed, panning at 500 miles. When you get into slow shutter speeds, that's a long lens to be hand holding. And if you're not hand holding it, then you're on a monopod that's about 8 foot tall, which is getting equally difficult to handle. So I've got some. Got a lot of sympathy for that. [01:40:05] Speaker A: Yeah. It doesn't sound. It doesn't sound easy. I've never done much aircraft photography at all, so I don't. I wouldn't even know where to like. Yeah. I wouldn't even know what shutters. I'd probably started at 200ths or something and then maybe work my way down. If that worked. Yeah. I wouldn't even know where to begin. [01:40:21] Speaker B: It kind of. It doesn't always matter with the. With the jets because you can't tell too, because you're up in the sky. If you've got a overcast day, you can't really tell if they're going. If you're shooting a fast or slow shutter speed, but anything that's got a prop, then you need to be sort of 160th of a second or lower to make it look to former sort of full disc. [01:40:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:40:49] Speaker B: So those are both Goodwood Festival of Speed. Another event I do for the organizer. Just cool. Lots of cool cars, everyone enjoying themselves. Lots of burnouts. This is. They do a ball for the. The Duke puts on a ball through sort of guests and they do a big firework display. So our office is based around the paddock. So we creep out and do some shots during the firework display. [01:41:21] Speaker A: Yeah, very cool. Did you have to light that at all or was that just ambient? [01:41:24] Speaker B: Just ambient light? [01:41:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:41:26] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. Yeah. Goodwood again, that's a guy called Adrian Newey who, Who's designed Red Bull's cars for the last decade or or so about to drive one of his cars up the hill. So he's. I don't know what he is going to be. I think he's 60 something. This was last year, I think maybe the year before 2021 it says in the file. So, yeah, fair. Fair play to him actually getting out there and driving. I think he's in one of the V10 cars, so. Proper animal. [01:42:04] Speaker A: Oh, wow. Oh, that is nuts. [01:42:10] Speaker B: That's at the British Grand Prix. Nico. Wrong person to win at the British Grand Prix. But there we go. [01:42:23] Speaker A: Cameras and people everywhere. How much is. How often does this happen in the like the world that you're in of race series? Is there much action like this on your average weekend? [01:42:34] Speaker B: So we, our, our events are a bit quieter than that. So F1 is a different. Different level of busy to us. But we have now got the Valentino Rossi effect. So we have Vale driving him in one of my teams I work for. So there's an awful lot of madness that comes with him. He's. Yeah, like we. We just said Imola last week. So the Italian. Our Italian round and the 24 7, there's people queued up waiting to get an autograph. When you do the autograph sessions, there's I don't know how many people, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people and they all literally climb over other people to get near him. Like he is a God type figure out there. So we, we have a little tiny bit of that, but nothing compared to what it's like in F1. [01:43:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Right. Is there. Before we go on to some more images, is there anything like you've been doing this for, you know, a decade or longer? Is there anything crazy that's happened that stands out to you? That's like anything crazy you've seen while you've been doing this? [01:43:48] Speaker B: Any moments probably should Be a list of things shouldn't there. But just. We're just. Random stuff happens, like random accidents and things. It's always the car. Cars not staying where they're going to be is normally the. The biggest concern in our line of work. So big crashes where cars end up in funny places. We've had a few. Few near misses, but nothing too. Too bad to this point. Tend to get a bit smarter about where you stand as you go along and get a bit better at predicting where stuff's going to end up if it does start going wrong. [01:44:34] Speaker A: So. So even at this level of writing racing, which is a very high level, like safety is obviously very well taken care of into. At the. You know, this isn't. These aren't backyard operations. Like there's a lot of safety protocols and a lot of. But. But you still have to take some of this into your own hands in terms of where. Where am I going to stand and. And how careful do I need to be, even at this level. [01:44:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you've got to. In the back of your mind, if you stand somewhere and you're on the outside of a corner and there's no runoff, so no. No gap between the track and the barrier that you're shooting against. We will normally have like a catch fence, which is like a mesh fence that we can hopefully shoot through the sort of holes in it. But if something hits that, it's going to move the wall and it's going to chuck a bunch of stuff through it. You know, even if a car goes through gravel traps and it chucks a bunch of gravel at you, that. That really hurts. So you. You just have to have in the back of your mind, how am I going to get out of here if it seems like it's going wrong? Should it be. Is it worth it for the picture? Which I think is probably the. The bit that when you're first into it, you're like, oh, this would be a mega place to stand. But there's a particular spot, it's Brands Hatch, where you go down a quite famous corner called Paddock, which is a big dip as it comes up the other side. The gravel trap. It's got a huge gravel trap, but it pinches down to the. Almost to the racetrack. And you used to be allowed to stand on that point where the gravel trap met the racetrack. But you'd get the cars coming down the hill running a bit wide going through the gravel trap. It was a great photo. Like cars completely sideways, gravel flying everywhere. But you are the first barrier and then six foot behind it, there's you. You're the next thing it's going to hit. And I used to stand there because it was a cracking shot. Like, I was quite happy standing there. I couldn't see the issue with it at the time. And now I. I don't get to go to Brand's Hatch anymore. Even though. Which is a shame because I love it. I went back there a few years ago and I was like. Could not pay me enough money to stand in this spot. Like it's suicidal. But it did not occur to me at the time when I was younger, less experienced. And I think they've stopped people standing there now, anyway. [01:47:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that's it. I guess. It's experience. And like you say, it's how. How worth it is it for the shot? And when you're new, every shot's worth it. You're just excited to get. [01:47:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:47:20] Speaker A: Great images. Yeah. [01:47:22] Speaker B: So that was my first. First or second. Second season, I think, with Aston Martin, and they won Le Mans with the. The green, the lime car, then 97, which is the first time they'd won it in eight, eight, nine years or something. But it's really cool because it was the first time I've been part of a team. It's the first time, like, I felt like I know. Knew all the guys because we. Because I only worked for this team at the time. That's what's changed quite a lot in the last sort of six, seven years, as we now work for multiple teams, whereas we used to work for just one team. So I knew all the mechanics really well and it meant so much to all of them. And they won it on the second to last lap. So they took first position with just one lap to go. And I think the next image was like, the reaction in the garage. [01:48:22] Speaker A: So great. [01:48:23] Speaker B: I know, like, loads of the guys that are in there, I still see now I still work for the same team. And I was trying to watch. I knew it was a decent chance that we'd take the. The lead, but I didn't know for sure. And I'm like, I'm as desperate to watch as they are because I want to see what's happening. But I was like, it's gonna be a cracking shot if. If it happens. So this is one of my favorite photos, even though it's not of a car. [01:48:48] Speaker A: So you. This was the moment that they passed, that they. They. Yep. And you were just waiting for it. Yes. So good. This is. The longer you look at this, the more Reactions that. Just the expressions on people's faces. [01:49:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:49:07] Speaker A: Yeah. That is a great photo. Well done. [01:49:10] Speaker B: Cheers. [01:49:11] Speaker A: It must have been. Must have been tough. Yeah. To not. Not go after the shot of the cars or, you know. Yeah, any. I guess there's million options for you. [01:49:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And a bit like the chap was asking a minute ago, do we look after the crew? Like I was working for Aston Martin and, and I was working with this team, so actually the, the people was sort of the bigger story. Like the, the overtake happened right out the back of the track, so there was no, no way I was going to be out there. And a car driving past another car doesn't necessarily translate like a picture of people does. [01:49:50] Speaker A: Yeah. So good. [01:49:54] Speaker B: That's Le Mans again, best event. My favorite. [01:50:01] Speaker A: Your favorite event? [01:50:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, I think so. In. In retrospect, ask me, you know, Sunday afternoon when I've not slept for 40 hours, it's the worst event of the year. But retrospectively it's. It's my favorite. So that's in the morning, that's sunrise. So the cars have been on track for 14 hours or something like that at that point. So they're all battered and covered in marbles. The. The bits of rubber that the other cars flick up. So they just look. The cars just look completely battered by the end of it. [01:50:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Gritty. [01:50:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:50:46] Speaker A: So you, you literally won't sleep through that event? [01:50:50] Speaker B: No, no. You might grab one hour normally after sunrise, sort of 10 o'clock in the morning or something. You'll try and grab an hour if you can. Or actually, quite often you choose not to sleep and go for a shower instead, because the shower wakes you up more than getting one hour. Sleep is just teasing yourself. It's better to go and have a nice shower and brush your teeth. [01:51:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Refresh. [01:51:19] Speaker B: Same again. Le Mans out the back. This is the proper bit of the track, which is still public road. There's a big spectator bank out there. They all got their barbecues going, so you get lots of nice smoke. Although it feels like a long time ago, we've not had a dry lemon for a little while, so hopefully some of that this year. [01:51:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I actually. So this comment comes through a little while ago from Dennis. He said, gotta fly. Thank you for your time, Nick. I think your work is beautiful. Dark, moody and the. In tight here. Human stuff like these are. So this is a great example of dark and moody and, and, and we saw some of you capturing the. The more human emotions like that. Yeah, it's beautiful work. It really is. You could have. Dennis couldn't have said it better. [01:52:18] Speaker B: That's good. It's good fun. I love it. It's not a proper job so I'm very lucky to get to do it and it is. [01:52:26] Speaker A: Oh, look at that. [01:52:28] Speaker B: So that's Singapore F1. That was the last, last race that Sebastian Vettel won in his career, unbeknownst to me at the time. But Singapore is cool. Like you, you cannot miss in Singapore. It's just. It's so cool. [01:52:46] Speaker A: Looks great from every angle, every direction, everything. [01:52:49] Speaker B: Pretty much, yeah. Light, lights, Formula One cars. Like for one Formula One. Isn't my bag really like I've done a few 10, 10, 15 races or something, but it's catches each track at its best. Like the track will never look as good as it does for a Formula one race. Spectate, you know, tons of spectators, tons of, you know, branding, lights, fireworks. Like it looks mega. Like it's great for photos. [01:53:23] Speaker A: So it's great for photos. What about it? Isn't your bag what makes you more drawn to the work that you're doing with endurance? [01:53:34] Speaker B: It's very intense. So you get. It's a lot like the racing. You have a 90 minute race, which realistically you are. You're going to be working for a photo agency because that's pretty much the only people that exist now in, in F1, which means you're going to be stood on a particular corner for the whole race waiting for action, waiting for newsworthy action. So a crash pretty much. So you don't get the freedom to do what you want. And there are. That's not true of everyone. There are photographers who get to do that. There's a guy called Vladimir Rees who's incredible and does some incredible art. But for the majority of photographers who are based with agencies, you're pretty much doing like you are there waiting for something exciting to happen. Don't get as much the free practices you can do a bit more. You can go a bit more arty and go looking for some more exciting photos, but they don't have as much free practice running as they used to. It just, it just doesn't do it for me for some reason. There's a lot of. Every event you go to is like the biggest event of the year, but you do that every week. There's an awful lot of sponsor stuff you have to do in the evenings. Going to dinners and shooting, you know, grip and grip and grin type things, which a lot of that stuff we don't have to do in sports. Cars, our races are six hours at a minimum. 6, 8, 10, 24 hours. We see some, you know, sunsets, sunrises, rain. You know, photographically, I think sports cars has. Or to give. Although the events themselves at Formula One are unbeatable, they just look incredible. Silverstone, our local track, is a horrendous track to photograph. Except for Formula One, MotoGP, it's the only time that you will fill Silverstone. The rest of the time, it looks like a car park. [01:55:51] Speaker A: Right. So just not just too empty. Just. [01:55:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:55:56] Speaker A: And that's so. Yeah. So interesting. Yeah. [01:56:02] Speaker B: So that's Spa. So we do all these. And for Le Mans, we go into town and do lots of events with parades and bits and bobs like that where the crowd can meet the drivers and do that kind of thing. So that was the. The driver lineup that won Le Mans in that previous picture, actually. [01:56:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. And is it that. So this was after they had won? [01:56:29] Speaker B: No, this was before. [01:56:31] Speaker A: That's what I was going to say. So. So it's this kind of stuff where it's like, you don't know how important some of these images might be. [01:56:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:56:37] Speaker A: You know what I mean? As in, because you're taking them prior to them potentially winning the race, and then all of a sudden, you know, who knows who's gonna want these images and where they're gonna get used? Because that's the team that won. Yeah, yeah. It's. I guess you just got to work. Work, work, work, no matter what. [01:56:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That Spa, that's a rouge. Very famous corner off there in a couple of. Or next Tuesday off there. [01:57:09] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, that's it. [01:57:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Hopefully that was a random Ferrari track day in Shanghai. Got flown there for 24 hours. Literally shot two. Well, 48 hours, I suppose. Literally landed, went to the track, went. Shot for a day, went back to the track. The guy got so drunk the night before with his mates who were also driving, that they didn't drive. And then I flew back again. [01:57:44] Speaker A: Really? [01:57:45] Speaker B: Yeah. There's an F1 car and this. I think that's an FXXK. Yeah, you just. Stuff like that does happen occasionally. [01:57:56] Speaker A: Wow, that's crazy. [01:58:01] Speaker B: That's Goodwood again. Members meeting some sports cars at sunset. Historic stuff, general portraits. Gabby Aubrey, French racing driver. [01:58:23] Speaker A: Yeah, Love it. I love all this work. How. What sort of duration are we looking at here with. With some of this selection? Like, how far back are we going? Is this mostly last sort of five years or so, or. [01:58:40] Speaker B: I think the Formula one. The Formula one shot with the Big crowd of people that had been like 2013 or 14, I think. [01:58:49] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. [01:58:51] Speaker B: But this is, this was the COVID F1. So even though this is during Formula 1, you can see in the grandstands, there's not a single person because it was a closed doors, Formula one race. So there was literally two groups of people. You were either in the paddock or you were out the paddock. So I was trackside, so I was in the. Out the paddock team. So we literally shot the track. We were. Because I was shooting for an agency, we were sending off the back of the camera. So you're just remotely sending pictures and then you went home. And then the guys who were in the track were working inside the, inside the paddock and we weren't. We never saw them. We did two, two weeks, I think they were split by a week, the two events. I didn't see any of the people inside the paddock. That period of time, it was bizarre. [01:59:53] Speaker A: So they were kind of operating in a bubble and didn't. Didn't want to interact with anyone that could potentially. Yeah. So it was like, Yep, there's this clear line of these people are all in this bubble. If they don't see anyone else, then we should all be good. And all the rest of you had to stay. Yeah. [02:00:11] Speaker B: Wow. Yeah, Very odd. [02:00:15] Speaker A: Yeah, very odd. Very strange. I'm just mindful of time. We're coming up on two hours. I could listen to these stories all night. This is so cool. I just want to. Are there any images we should take a look at before we let you go and get on with your day? [02:00:33] Speaker B: Chris Hoy One's good, actually. The. Just one line up from where you are currently. The chap with the blue car, second row in. [02:00:45] Speaker A: Where am I looking? [02:00:47] Speaker B: There you go. Up a couple. [02:00:49] Speaker A: Oh, sorry. Yeah, I was looking on the wrong line. [02:00:52] Speaker B: So that's a chap called Chris Hoy. He's one of our Olympians, a cyclist. And this was him racing at Le Mans for the first time. And I got asked, shooting for Nissan at the time they asked me to come and do this. I didn't really know what it was for. And I remember I saw Chris, got introduced to him the day before and I sort of said, hello, introduce myself. But most certainly in, in my circles, he's very famous for being a Brit. So I saw him the next day and I sort of reintroduced myself and he goes, I, I know, I know you said hello yesterday kind of thing like, I remember who you were like. And he was just the Nicest man you'd ever meet in the entire world. Like he super famous. Could have been a complete jerk or whatever, but he just. He remembered my name all the way through the shoot. He was super helpful. The bike he's holding is a bike that his company made. He was super. Let's get the cranks in the right position. Let's. Attention to detail. So nice. Really interested to see the photos, that sort of thing. And then it. They also got used as the front cover for his. For a documentary that BBC did on him doing Le Mans, which I didn't know it was going to do at the time. So it's cool for. For a year after seeing BBC iPlayer. Yeah. This on the front of it. So yeah, one of the sort of. I get to work with quite a lot of celebrities and most of them don't are not that fast. Like they're just people in the circle that we move in. If they're trying to be race drivers, then they're not very good anyway. Like they're. They're kind of not, you know, it's not their specialty. But Chris was such a nice guy and he was a fairly decent racing driver as well. They sort of left a much longer lasting impression than a lot of them do. [02:02:55] Speaker A: That's very, very cool. And these shots often look like. Oh yeah, you know, you just line this up and it's easy. But I often find images like this more difficult than taking action shots. When you can completely control the situation, you want to make something striking. Sometimes it's harder than. Harder than you think. Was this a difficult shot to pull off? [02:03:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I was pretty nervous about this one because I was still quite green. So it's 2016, so I've not been at it too long. I used a little bit of off camera flash as well to try and lift it a little bit because Le Mans can be a bit flat and gray. So I needed a bit of. A bit of pop. But to be honest, he made it that much easier. He was so cool about it that I just felt super comfortable and so on. On that note, I think there's a studio image in here as well somewhere. Yeah. The middle or to your right one. That one there? Yeah. So that's shot in a studio, which you were saying about like being more comfortable about controlling when you've got. When you're used to shooting with ambient light. When someone says to you, here you go, you can do whatever you want is. It's almost too much choice. You almost want someone to go, actually I put the lights here, here and here. Now put the car in a cool position, then you can work with it. But actually it's one of my favorite things to do now is shoot in the studio. Would thoroughly recommend it to anyone who shoots automotive because it just. And probably other photography applies to as well, I guess just teaches you so much about how things react to light and everyone says that and I think when you're starting in photography you're like, ah, whatever. Like it's one of those things that people say, but it is so true, like being able to control how the light falls on the car and like seeing how different, how it reacts differently in different directions and it's super interesting. So I really enjoy this sort of studio stuff. [02:05:09] Speaker A: That's great advice. Absolutely. And that must be. I mean, it's got to be a decent sized studio that. Yeah, that's an epic studio shot. [02:05:19] Speaker B: Yeah, you can get a bus in there if you need to. [02:05:24] Speaker A: That's amazing and great advice. I think that's something good to finish on. We've done over two hours. As I said, I could listen to this story, the stories all night and Bruce says, amazing body of work and I agree, so cool. Tons of variation, tons of human elements in there. Really something to be proud of. [02:05:51] Speaker B: Thanks, appreciate it. [02:05:53] Speaker A: James Barraclor says thanks for the talk tonight. Great insight into motorsport photography. Amazing shots. I'd love to do this. I agree. I would love to do it too. I think we'd all have to. We'd have to fight Nick for the job, but yeah, it sounds like a dream. Andrew hall says, I'll see you in Le Mans soon, mate. [02:06:13] Speaker B: See you, Skippy. [02:06:16] Speaker A: If. If you guys enjoyed the motorsports chat, go and listen to our episode with Andrew hall. If you haven't listened to that already. I can't remember what number it is, but go back a few. You can find it on YouTube or on Spotify or Apple podcasts or any of those things. I should do more of this. This stuff. I forgot all this stuff at the start of the show. But all of our episodes are on audio as well as on YouTube. So subscribe, like do all that kind of stuff and otherwise. Nick, anything else that you want to chat about before we let you go? [02:06:49] Speaker B: No, I think I should let you guys get to bed soon anyway. [02:06:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it is. It's getting to that time of night. I got an early start tomorrow. People can follow you on Instagram and we've linked your website in the show notes as well. [02:07:01] Speaker B: Drop me a message if you've got any Questions or anything. Happy to. [02:07:07] Speaker A: Yeah, hit him up. Philip Johnson says thanks Nick and Justin, good show. And Fuji free. Yeah, that's right. We haven't mentioned Fujifilm once, which is I think gotta be. Maybe it's a first. It's amazing. But then we just mentioned it. You ruined it, Philip. [02:07:21] Speaker B: So close. [02:07:22] Speaker A: We almost made it. Bruce Moore says thanks for the show. Really great. Thanks to see you again, Bruce. Bruce is on in not this Thursday, the next Thursday, so. Oh no, Monday. I don't know. Bruce is on a week. You'll see it. He's coming. Andrew hall says Fujifilm. Rick Nelson says thank you both for the show. It was great. All right, I guess we'll leave it there. Thanks Nick. Thanks so much for your time. What are you on for the rest of your day? [02:07:50] Speaker B: I am trying to do a one day edit of some of the non glamorous stuff I do. I shoot some friends furniture in a studio for him. So I have a one day furniture edit to do in half a day and then I'm shooting shooting again for him tomorrow in the studio. The less glamorous things I fill my time with between motorsport events. [02:08:15] Speaker A: Furniture. [02:08:16] Speaker B: Furniture. Yeah, stupid. But the compositing and the editing actually is almost the same as you do on cars. So it sounds weird, but nice. [02:08:27] Speaker A: And they don't move very fast. [02:08:29] Speaker B: No, exactly. Nice change of pace. [02:08:33] Speaker A: Bruce Moyle says next Monday. That's right. So Bruce is on Monday May 5th. Make sure you're there. And otherwise we've got Tom Putt on Thursday morning this week. So the guests just keep on coming. All right, we'll leave it there. [02:08:47] Speaker B: Thanks for having me on. [02:08:49] Speaker A: Thank you so much and thank you all for listening. We'll catch you guys on the next one.