I had my first racing shoot for the year on Saturday. The AMA
National Arenacross round at Sacramento, last Sat. night. I did come
away with some good stuff, though. Those interested can check out my
posting on SportsShooter.com:
http://www.sportsshooter.com/members.html?id=1138
Curious to see what y'all think....
Background:
Arenacross is a motocross-like event similar to Supercross (which is
run in a big football or baseball stadium) except it is indoors, and
in much, much tighter confines. Imagine stuffing a Supercross event
held at Pac Bell Park inside the Cow Palace, and you'll know what I
mean. The event was held in the Arco Arena, home of the Sacramento
Kings Basketball team.
It was a tough shoot. The confines are very tight, and speed of the
action is furious. Imagine a motocross at some insane video-game type
of speed. You have 125 and 250cc two-stroke racing dirt bikes in
really tight confines, going really fast and zig-zagging back and
forth in the building over the whoop-de-doos and rhythm section,
bikes crossing one direction and then the other. It's tough finding a
place to stand let alone take photographs without worrying about
literally getting taken out by a flying motorcycle. One photographer
almost had his head taken off by an airborne 65cc two stroke that was
literally flying sideways when a rider came off a jump and crashed
and his bike took off through the air. The photographer shouldn't
have been in spot in that was an impact zone, and the course marshall
flipped and threw him out there. The course is topped off by a huge
jump that gets bikes as high as 43 ft in the air. The lighting was
tough...there were ghastly fluorescents that gave everything a
greenish cast, and then once the racing started, these incredibly
bright floods came on that emulated the sun, or so it seemed! This
mish-mash of lighting plus shooting with flash meant finding a proper
white balance was really hit or miss. I shot primarily with the
70-200/2.8 at ISO 800; it was very tiring and my back was aching by
the end of the night (started at 7, ended at 11 PM, no rest for the
weary); there were literally only minutes between races. The action
is so fast and furious that I shot 244 frames in the first heat race
of 8 laps....which lasted about 7 minutes!
-Stephen.
--
2001 CBR600F4i - Fantastic!
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