Talladega portraits

Miller from Little Rock, AR, Talladega Superspeedway, Alabama, Oct. 2016

I WASN'T AT TALLADEGA FOR MORE THAN A DAY before I realized that, for many of the people there, the race wasn't the reason they came. There were thousands of people at the track, in the infield and on the campgrounds outside, and it didn't take long to do the sums and figure out how few of them would have a decent view of the track. Clearly, this was about something more than a car race.

It was then that I began taking portraits in earnest, walking up and down the Boulevard with my camera and my flexible reflector, stopping people whenever I thought they looked interesting. I knew that portraits were going to be a big part of my story, but knowing that these people were here mostly because they wanted each other's company for a weekend, I wanted to capture at least a tiny sliver of this ad hoc community.

Paul and his buddies from Canada, Talladega Boulevard, Talladega Superspeedway, Oct. 2016

Talladega Boulevard, Saturday morning, Talladega Superspeedway, Oct. 2016

The Boulevard was Main Street, where campers set up their little compounds with living rooms, bars, kitchens and even hot tubs and stripper poles to face each other. There was almost no point asking permission to take photos here because they'd come to Talladega to put themselves on display.

Bobby and Donnie Allison, Talladega Superspeedway, Alabama, Oct. 2016

When I discovered Bobby and Donnie Allison doing autographs outside the driver's meeting on race day, I knew I had to try and get something like a portrait, even if it was a stolen few seconds before they got back to the task of putting their signatures on tickets, books, hats, shirts and model cars. I like NASCAR a lot, but my vague memories of it from my childhood are of a wilder, noisier, hairier time, and men like this were at their prime then.

Michael from Little Rock, AR, Talladega Boulevard, Talladega Superspeedway, Oct. 2016

Cody from Little Rock, AR, Talladega Boulevard, Talladega Superspeedway, Oct. 2016

Blake from Little Rock, AR, Talladega Boulevard, Talladega Superspeedway, Oct. 2016

The great attraction of photography for me is the constant challenge, where I'm forced to pivot from landscapes to street photography to still lifes and even sports shooting. Photography is my craft and my trade, but portraiture is something like a calling, and once I begin shooting portraits I don't want to stop.

Patricia from Murphy, NC, Talladega Boulevard, Talladega Superspeedway, Oct. 2016

Fireman, Pit row, Talladega Superspeedway, Alabama, Oct. 2016

There were so many great faces at Talladega, and thanks to the nature of the event and some quirk of southern hospitality, nobody turned me down when I asked to take their picture. If I didn't have another job to do and a race to shoot, I could have happily walked around all day with my little Fuji camera and my collapsible backdrop, collecting faces.

Dennis from Talladega, AL, Talladega Superspeedway, Alabama, Oct. 2016

Barry from Talladega, AL, Talladega Superspeedway, Alabama, Oct. 2016

Ricky from Walker, LA, Talladega Superspeedway, Alabama, Oct. 2016

My last portraits of the weekend were of my neighbours in the exclusive little RV parking lot just by the start/finish straight. Ricky McGehee and the Craig brothers, Barry and Dennis, were real gentlemen, and I offered them the use of the rooftop deck of my rented tour bus to watch the race while I wandered back and forth around the track during the big race.

I shot these portraits and they asked me how I'd enjoyed myself. I said I'd had a ball, but it was my big disappointment that I'd never had a taste of moonshine. After all, if it wasn't for moonshine this whole huge spectacle wouldn't be here. They looked at each other and laughed and one of them pulled open his cooler and offered me a big cold jar of shine with peach slices swimming at the bottom.

And with that, my trip was perfect.

Talladega

Looking down the track, Talladega Superspeedway, Alabama, Oct. 2016

IT'S THE SIZE OF THE PLACE THAT GETS YOU FIRST. A whole town fits into the infield at Alabama's Talladega Superspeedway, and that doesn't take into account the town that springs up in the campgrounds outside the track for the race. Despite this, the race weekend never feels overcrowded or mobbed.

I jumped at my editor's suggestion that I build a travel story around living in the infield at a NASCAR race, and when the nice people at Alabama Tourism stepped up to make it happen, I knew I was going to be given a photo opportunity I'd probably never have again.

Infield campground, Talladega Superspeedway, Alabama, Oct. 2016

The infield is a story on its own, independent of the race, and I'll have more on that tomorrow. What was amazing was how well it all worked, with thousands of people showing up with tents, campers and RVs of varying size and quality to create a makeshift community for a hard-partying weekend, then disperse within a day of the race ending.

As a logistical feat, it's actually more impressive than the well-oiled machine that brings the cars, drivers, mechanics and crew to a new track almost every weekend. The people who make that happen are a community of professionals who get paid to make that happen; the folks in the infield and in the campgrounds outside the track are paying for the chance to sit in the sun (or rain) and celebrate their love of car racing, coming from around the country (and the world) with few certainties other than that they'll probably get drunk, eat grilled meat, and use a porta-potty.

Talladega Superspeedway, Alabama, Oct. 2016

As I wrote elsewhere, shooting the race itself proved to be far harder than I anticipated, and was nothing at all like photographing the Indycar street circuit here in Toronto. It was a good thing, then, that my job wasn't to cover a race but the whole circus around it.

The great attraction of a NASCAR race is how close fans can get to the cars and the drivers, so the garages and pits were thronged with people right up until the race started. After my competence with shooting racecars at the Honda Indy improved enough that it felt less challenging, I found myself turning my camera on the people at the track, and the hunt for photos there has never lost its thrill.

Race day, Talladega Superspeedway, Alabama, Oct. 2016

It's one thing to do street photography. It's another where the street has no speed limit, and half the people there are wearing clothes branded with corporate logos. And then there's the constant potential for accidents and misadventure, built into the the experience and anticipated with the waiver you sign just to be there. There's no other place like it.

I'd like to do it again - maybe at Talladega, but certainly at some other iconic track like Indy or Daytona or Watkins Glen. At the moment, though, I'm without any client interested in sending me back to a track with my cameras, so my weekend at Talladega felt something like a swansong.

Honda Indy 2016

I'VE COVERED THE HONDA INDY EVERY YEAR FOR FIVE YEARS NOW. At first I did it because I'm a bit of a gearhead, and wanted to challenge myself to shoot motorsport. This year - possibly my last one if I can't find someone new to write for - I tried to do more formal portraits on the spot, a challenge I've been anxious to bring to everything I shoot lately.

Daniel Morad, IMSA Porsche GT3 driver

Jean-Francois & Louis-Philippe Dumoulin, NASCAR Pinty's Series drivers

Sara Price, Stadium Super Trucks driver

Neil Campbell, Andretti Motorsport mechanic

Alexander Rossi, Indycar driver

Simon Pagenaud, Indycar driver

While shooting the Indycar race, last year's winner Josef Newgarden lost control and hit the wall just in front of where I was standing. This shot of his car, wheel busted, hanging from the recovery vehicle's tow winch, might be a little symbol of where my own motorsport photography ambitions are, just at the moment.

Indy

USF2000 race, Honda Indy, Toronto, June 12, 2015

I LOVE CARS ALMOST AS MUCH AS I LOVE PHOTOGRAPHY. Which is why the auto show and the annual IndyCar weekend here in Toronto are probably the highlights of my year, the way the film festival once was. The Honda Indy rolled through town this weekend, a month earlier than usual, and for the fourth year I was able to snag accreditation and spend three days in the sun and rain with my cameras, stalking the edge of the track with my earplugs.

It's mostly a technical challenge, about capturing action and framing shots on the fly, trying to get some sense of the speed, the weather and the human element tucked somewhere inside the machines. Learning to shoot motorsport presented a steep learning curve, but this was the first year when I felt I could get up to speed fast and reach a plateau of competence, and maybe set myself a further technical challenge.

IndyCar race, Honda Indy, Toronto, June 12, 2015

The challenge I set myself this year was "car panning" - those shots that inevitably get run on double truck spreads and posters, where the car is relatively sharp and centred and the background and foreground are a horizontal blur. It's a motorsport photography cliche, but I wanted to see if I could pull it off this year.

The challenge at the Toronto Indy circuit is that there are no long unobstructed straights where you're level with the cars as they speed past. The closest you get is the front start/finish straight running down to the Princes Gates, which is planted with a line of trees. As you pan your camera, trying to hold the car stationary in the middle of the frame, you hope that one of the shots in the high speed burst you're firing will catch the car between the trees and the poles of the catch fence.

This shot isn't perfect, but it's as good as the circumstances allow, and I'm pretty pleased with it considering; it'll be nice, one day, to find myself in an ideal spot, on a track with a clear view of a straight. One day, maybe.

I set myself another challenge this year - an Instagram series shot with my new X-30, provisionally titled "Behind the Fence" and featuring the sorts of things you see when you have an all access pass and a photo vest.

Call it street photography, where the street is one where the cars can hit 200mph and occasionally flip over or hit each other. It's also the sort of place where there are literally dozens of professionals and hundreds of amateurs walking around with cameras; it's an environment where almost anyone expects to be in someone's frame at some point, which makes them relaxed in a way the average pedestrians aren't anymore.

I set the X-30 to work as a compact Rolleiflex, with a 1:1 frame and the sensor set to either ape black and white film with a yellow filter or nice, bright Velviachrome. It let me work much more in my comfort zone as a photographer, which kept my shooting morale up while I worried about what my DSLR was capturing all weekend.

It also let me dip a toe into Instagram as a publishing and promotion platform - one that (so I'm told) is where you'll find the kids who source and buy photos for magazines, books and websites. My Instagram feed is here, if you're curious, and the series can be found by searching it using the hashtags #indyTO, #behindthefence and #indycar. Let's see what happens with this sort of thing, shall we?