You may remember my Photographing a drivers school and School report blog posts from last September where I described the typical day of a photographer at the Shelsley Walsh drivers school. Well yesterday I was there again covering another drivers school with pretty much perfect photography weather – fine, warm but with cloud cover to reduce reflections and blown highlights.

I used the same format and basically started the day at the bottom of the hill and worked my way up. With 35 drivers entered that means 35 shots at each location (or 70 if I double-shoot with both camera bodies holding different focal-length lenses) and so the images soon start to stack up throughout the day. At the back of my mind is the nagging thought of having to sit in front of a computer sorting them all out – especially when you have drivers ‘dual-driving’ the same car (of which there were 5 yesterday). Keeping the shots in order is therefore so important, as is synchronising the time on both camera bodies beforehand.

As a motorsport photographer you take it for granted that you can hear a car coming towards you. When you know the venue well you can even tell where exactly that car is; by the engine note altering at gear changes, whether the engine is accelerating, working to get up a hill or slowing down for a corner. The human brain can decipher all of this information so that you can be ready with your camera pointing at exactly the right point as the car enters your field of view.
Except when the car is electric.
One of the guests had brought a Tesla which (explaining just in case you have been living in a cave for the past few years) has no internal combustion engine and is powered purely by battery. Apart from a bit of road noise from the tyres it is virtually silent. This means it appears without warning and I was caught napping several times during the day. As more and more electric cars enter the motorsport arena photographers will need to develop a sixth sense.

