A moment of impact…. Robbie Nishida takes out a pylon and shatters his front bumper. UK photographer David Lister was there to shoot the image.
You saw David’s incredible gallery from the practice and qualifying sessions at Formula Drift Irwindale…. now let’s look at his snaps from the event proper.
One subject I am always going on about, to the different Speedhunters photographers, is to try and mix up the framing of the shots as much as possible. Not all photographs need to be about looking at the details of the cars. Wide shots that show the Speedhunters readers the ambience of an event are just as important as close up full framed photos of cars. David already seems to have this instinct built itn as he chose to shoot the opening ceremony of FD Irwindale from the stands.
This shot gives you a good idea just how fantastic Irwindale is from a spectator viewpoint. Everything happens in front of your eyes…. it’s hard not to be carried by the energy of the crowd…. just look at how packed it is!
JR told me that he woke up on Saturday morning with the thought that he was going to be running against Bill Sherman that day… and voila… look who he went up against during the Top 16 battles. He seemed pretty unstoppable at Irwindale and had no trouble disposing of Wild Bill.
In this photo you get a sense of the speed and drama of tandem battles on the Irwindale banking. I’m going to have to try shooting more from high up on the grandstand next year. It’s a great angle.
A beautiful shot of Takatori vs Yoshihara… Look how much camber is on the Skyline’s front wheel….
For the Great 8 Battles JR went up against Miki’s RX7. In this shot they are accelerating down the back section of the oval towards the first drift initiation along the banking.
There is really nothing like night time drifting under the flood lights is there?
For this next group of photos let’s look in detail at the Tanner Foust vs. Ryan Tuerck…
I am a big fan of these panning slow shutter shots that you see John Brooks and David Lister doing on their sportscarpros.com website…. They give a great sense of speed and require a lot of in-camera skill to pull off.
Sideways up against the concrete barrier… Great shot.
Now compare this shot of Tanner leading Ryan from the above shot….. you can see that Tanner has pulled out a gap and that Ryan really has no hope of catching up. It’s game over for him.
I’m curious to understand the secrets of Tanner’s and Papadakis’ success. The Rockstar 350Z is really nothing crazy compared to some of the big budget, high horsepower cars that it competes against. Is it all driver? Is Tanner really that good? Or are Papadakis racing able to provide car set up and support beyond most of their competitors?
Antonio has written extensively about Tanner’s battle with Justin Pawlak here…. From my end I think this is just a great photo. The blue of the FC just singing electric! I also love the Japanese wave graphic on the side of the car.
And the final… Vaughn Gittin JR. Vs. Tanner Foust….
Ultimately it was JR that put a stop to Tanner’s progression up the order. We’ll hear from JR soon enough as to how this was accomplished, when he gives us his next blog posting.
In the mean time, we’d like to extend our congratulations to Vaughn for his first Formula Drift victory! Nice one m8!
Thanks to David Lister for the great photography. We’ll have to do this again soon Dave!
:Rod Chong
OFFICIAL SPEEDHUNTERS SUPPLIERS
Those speed shots are cool! Nice pics!
That woodblock wave style graphic is great. Even better with the restrained colour useage.
Incidentally, whilst Im all for the athletic excellence displayed at the Olympics, I wouldnt usually spent time perusing photos of that sort of event, but David's gallery and writeup on SCP was something else. The sprinting shot from the heavens even spent a couple of days as a wallpaper... then it was back to a woodblock painting of Fujisan...
Speed shots are cool. Especially those ones with tiny cars and huge crowd in the background.
Part of the reason the skyline appears to have so much camber is the function of caster
As the weel is fully turned in the pivot of the hub isnt vertical it is angled towards the back of the car this gives you camber gain through steering. This of course works the opposite on the other side of the car as you can see the wheel is in fact nearly upright as it is turned out
musashi999. Much as I would love to claim the credit for those cool pictures from the Olympics, they were actually shot by an incredibly cool US-based photographer called Rick Dole. Rick is special, he's a very cool guy and a good contributor to Sportscarpros (normally he covers the American Le Mans Series fro us). Rick took that sprinting shot of Bolt winning the 200 metres from the top of the stands. As a photographer, at the Olympics, you cannot use the low down photo-pits to shoot from unless you are with a major agency. Rick wasn't, and so (for one of the few times) he gambled, went high, and got the shot of the guys running through the graphic of the olympic rings. It is very cool. Most everybody else got the low down emotion. Rick's write up shows just how hard professional photography can be.
Great pics Dave! and OMG the noise (actually, the lack of it) on your D3 is INSANE!!!! Wow awesome!!!!!!!!!!!! I need to get a new camera body, holy crap. A 400 or 500 wouldn't hurt either, maybe I should just sell my Lexus to fund all the camera equipment I want!
Doh! A fool I am. Thanks David.
yeah nice job david! we need more of those slow shutter shots, they look awesome.
mens.....its crazy to see people do this kind of art...i've been trying to work it out or at least to become an amateur..
mens.....its crazy to see people do this kind of art...i've been trying to work it out or at least to become an amateur.. and i forgot to say that david, you're awesome..