In the beginning

A few years ago I spent some time doing a little photography at various motorsport events, mostly in Sydney. I'd never had much of an interest (other than the obligatory Bathurst weekend) before I met Little boy's father. When I met him he was an amateur photographer. While we were together he started his own business and got his foot in the door doing the motorsport photos semi-professionally. As a result of this I would go out to the track with him, spare media pass and second camera in hand, and play around.

Standing just on the other side of the concrete barriers and having cars fly past ended up being quite exciting for me. I absolutely fell in love with the sport and capturing it on film (we hadn't gone digital then). It could also be rather frustrating trying to get the "perfect" shot, or in my case just getting a decent shot at all. Many times we would find ourselves at one end of the track while all the action occurred at the other end. I would get almost giddy after finishing a roll that I thought may have just one good shot on it. I was always very impatient waiting to get the film developed, usually insisting we put the dozen rolls in that afternoon.

The photo above became my absolute favourite, I didn't need to crop it or sharpen it or anything, I loved it totally raw. Besides that I was absolutely chuffed that I'd managed to capture it in the first place. We were at Oran Park standing in the hollow of the "dogs leg" and could see only the small piece of track directly in front of us. The car is actually going slightly downhill but I had a habit of playing with angles. We could hear the cars coming and had to time it as they came over the hill towards us, it took me a while to get the hang of it.

Just when I thought I was getting the hang of taking photos of cars speeding past in a fraction of a second, we went to a motorbike/sidecar meeting and I realised I still had no clue what I was doing.

But I looked on the bright side, I might not have known what I was doing, but at least I wasn't doing something like this..