After my recent outings to Silverstone and Cadwell Park, I’m really starting to enjoy motorsport photography and my images are getting better. When I got offered another chance to get to a circuit, I jumped at it. This time I would be heading out to shoot an Oulton Park track day.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been to Oulton Park, it’s quite a journey from where I now live. Not being familiar with the circuit, I did the usual research looking at images taken at other events. Another good source of information when photographing new circuits is the Piston Click website. It is a site operated by motorsport photography enthusiasts and specialises in advice on shooting events from outside the fence. The circuit guides section of the site is rapidly becoming my go-to resource when I’m visiting a new circuit.
There are a couple of things that I like about practicing my photography at track days. Firstly, the spectator areas are usually empty. This means I can get unobstructed views from where ever I choose to photography from. Secondly, the roads around the circuit are usually open making it easy for me to get around to different areas of the circuit. The other thing I really like is the variety of different vehicles out get out on track. This Oulton Park track day didn’t disappoint me, there was everything from modern supercars to rebuilt classics.
Unlike my time at Cadwell Park, the weather was dry for the majority of the day. There was a brief rain shower around lunchtime, but this dried up pretty quickly. It briefly gave me the opportunity to grab some images of a few cars drifting around the final corner of the circuit.
As I found at Silverstone snd Cadwell Park, I used my 100-400mm lens for the majority of my shooting. There were a few locations that benefitted from the 150-600mm, namely the exit of Lodge and shooting Hislop’s from the infield. The sunny weather also taught me a lesson at Oulton Park, don’t forget a polariser. A number of my shots suffered from windscreen/window reflections. I could have avoided with a polariser, or a better choice of shooting spot. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice until I got the images on the big screen.
This was only my second outing with the Nikon Z8 shooting motorsports but I’m happy with my progress. There is still massive room for improvement, but I’m happy with the images I got. I’m now looking forward to the next Oulton Park track day, and seeing what improvements I can make.
Here’s a few of the images I captured on the day. A couple of the vehicles should look familiar.
As always, thanks for stopping by. If you want to get in touch, please feel free to reach out to me using the contact form. Let me know if you have any events happening you think I’d be interested in photographing.
