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BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX – DAY 2 GOOD FRIDAY

Day 2 was hot!  Exceedingly hot, in fact one seasoned pro bent down to take a shot in the pits and when he rose, some of his skin from his knee remained adhered to the tarmac.  Now that’s hot.  Apparently it was 46 degrees in the pits and around the track, it would have only been a couple of degrees shy of that, so photography in the first practice session was a grind.

The day started for me with pics of drivers entering the paddock.

The guy from yesterday who made a dick of himself with the selfie stick (blue striped shirt) was back chasing autograph today.

For the first practice session I headed to the section of track between turns 6 and 8 as there was some beautifully marked tarmac on both sides of the track that made for some interesting and clean shots and it was possible to shoot uphill with sky in the background.

The Red Bull of Max Verstappen was covered in green paint.  This allows the engineers to see  how the air is travelling over and around the vehicle.

They also used a metal apparatus at the rear of the car which provided some sort of data helpful to improving the car’s performance.  Meanwhile the temperature was still climbing which led this camera operator to strip down to the bare minimum to escape the desert heat.

I tried both sides of the track and used a variety of shutter speeds with this being the best slow shutter speed panning shot of Felipe Massa being overtaken by a Force India car.

For the second practice session I was in the pits and thankfully the temperature had dropped ten degrees but it was still hot work and one has to have their wits about them at all times with cars leaving and entering the garages.

I positioned myself on the ground to shoot the Mercedes pitstop and the car coming straight at me for a short time before veering out in to the pit lane. I love the low angle.

I’ve been most grateful for the advice I’ve received from some of the very best motor sport photographers. Someone like Clive Mason from Britain, who is regarded by most as exceptional, doesn’t think he is. Like everyone in the paddock, there is always something new to learn and a new angle to find, it’s just that the likes of Clive are higher up that learning ladder than most.

Day 3 sees the afternoon session pushed back an hour to 3pm, maybe that will wipe a couple of degrees off the temperature and qualifying under lights at 6pm. It won’t be quite as hectic a day as yesterday, but will hopefully yield better images.

Thanks for reading, now please share this amongst your motor sport friends.


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