DPerceptions

For me, the Mitty arrives at a precarious time.  Its at the beginning of the graduation season, which is a large source of income and a bigger drain of time for me.  I’m busy and geared up for a completely different form of photography.  I’m tired and cranky from non-stop hurry up and wait shooting.

#202 '72 BMW CSL: Byron DeFoor

Somehow I can still look forward to the Sunday peace and quiet of a day’s worth of vintage racing at Road Atlanta.  The Mitty simply cannot be missed even if only the final day.

This year, Formula 5000 was being honored and many were on hand for their sunday race.  I was especially keen to visit the grid before they let the public down onto it.  I think only 4 or 5 cars made it down before the officials let in the crowds for the grid walk.

#8 '70 Lola T290: Skip Haga

Don’t misunderstand me, I am all for fans being as close to the cars as possible, but its hard to do my job with 25 people in the way of every car.  To be honest, the most difficult people at some of these smaller events are the other photographers, many of whom have no sense of sharing space and taking turns.  Levels of professionalism I have become used to in the ALMS I guess.

Earlier, I was driving through the pits looking for a place to park to shoot some color.  Suddenly a woman started shouting and waving at me.  I thought she was some overly officious official who could not see my vehicle pass.  Turns out the crazy woman was my friend Deneen with whom I sometimes work the ALMS pits.  I did not recognize her without a headset and fire suit, weird how you assign clothing to people.  She is driving Bob Leitzinger’s RV and historics cars around the country this summer; very cool.  I pulled into their spot and talked to her and Bob for a while.  He was running a Lola and his Datsun that weekend and it was great fun to look through his photo albums and see the evolution of his racing career.

#99 '65 Lotus Elan: Bob Leitzinger

Like last year, and I would imagine all years, the Mitty was intermittently rainy, cloudy and then sunny.  At all times, it was quite warm.  The only real rain on Sunday happened just at the end of the 1st feature race around 9:30 am during the Vic Elford Trophy.  The next race was the GP bikes which didn’t run due to the water.  From that point on, it was dry.

#44C '09 Porsche Cayman: Jim McCormick

I am not convinced about the Cayman Interseries being involved with historic racing.  One one hand its cool to see the old liveries on the track, but how a new Porsche Cayman is Historic or Vintage is beyond my pay grade.  I digress.  Go to the track.  Watch Historic racing.  Meet the drivers.  Meet the People.  You will have a great time, I promise.

My entire The Mitty Challenge image gallery can be seen at DPerceptions Motorsports Photography.  Thanks for reading and looking!

HSR was running The Mitty Challenge at Road Atlanta on the Weekend of May 1-3.  I had to shoot a graduation on the 2nd, so we could not go up until Sunday. This worked out well as Sunday turned out to be a beautiful day.  The sky was a great medium gray with just enough light filtering through to keep the scene from going flat.  It had rained the two days prior, so the viewing audience was light.  What they lacked in numbers though, they certainly made up for in enthusiam.

We went around the the track to some of my favorite places to shoot.  I don’t know how other photographers do it, but I need to warm up, need to get my timing down, remember to breathe and not to stab the shutter button.  To do this, I find that returning to a familiar place helps to get the muscle memory back.  So I seldom start shooting from a new place.  Even when I am at a new track, I tend to look for a familiar corner or vantage point.  As soon as my timing is down and I am feeling comfortable, its time to try a new technique or look for a new POV.  This weekend I had decided to work on some really low speed pans in the nieghborhood of 1/20th of a second.  While I did have some success that day, the majority of my slow stuff was 1/40th or higher. One of the highlights of the day to us was the running of The Championships of Makes race.  There were only six cars entered, but Bobby Rahal was there in his 72 Lola T-290.  Apparently he ran this car at Road Atlanta quite a while back at the SCCA Nationals. He put on a clinic, lapping the entire field within 5 Laps.  It was extraordinary to watch.  My complete 2009 Mitty Challenge Photo Gallery is available online.