NASCAR Sprint Cup practice – stalking the garage

During this years NASCAR race weekend activities I vowed to produce images that were somewhat different from what I had typically produced in the past, which was clean shots of cars on track. Having said that, most of my time was spent hanging out in the garage area and looking for interesting photographs of the drivers or crew’s preparing the cars for qualifying and racing action.

02 March 2012: Matt Kenseth (17) waits in his car before a practice session for the SUBWAY Fresh Fit 500 Sprint Cup Series Race at Phoenix International Raceway in Avondale Arizona.

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2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series – Kobalt Tools 500 from Phoenix International Raceway – part 1

I know this post is a bit late, but as they say better late than never. After having wrapped up another NASCAR race weekend here I thought I would go ahead and post my images from the November 2011 Sprint Cup race, you see the first part of 2012 has been a bit crazy for me and I just haven’t had the time to post all the events ‘as they come’ so I’m getting around to it now.

The big theme for me this race weekend was ‘cars on track’ so my goal was to get good clean shots of as many cars on track as possible. Let’s see how I did.

12 November 2011: Jamie McMurray (1) takes hot laps during a qualifying session for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Kobalt Tools 500 Race at Phoenix International Raceway in Avondale Arizona.

I started with qualifying and found some success shooting into the sun, not always the best option for good shots but it was giving me an interesting effect and I managed to get some great shots of a limited number of the cars/drivers in their qualifying runs.

To see more great NASCAR Sprint Cup images click on the more link below:

NASCAR Sprint Cup tests the new surface at Phoenix International Raceway

Phoenix International Raceway had a massive re-paving project where the entire surface was replaced, as well as some other changes to increase safety and make the fans experience much better.

I expected the NASCAR Sprint Cup cars to be primer grey and with very few markings so I anticipated mostly working the garage for good shots of the drivers, well that wasn’t exactly how everything turned out.

I saw some photos from the construction phase and was interested in how covering the upcoming race in November would be effected.

To see the rest of the story including the rest of my images, click on the more link below.

Press Room Portraits

There are a ton of other photographers out there so I try to set myself apart from the others by doing something different. I like shooting portraits of people in the interview room because you can sometimes get unique expressions and often times the portraits can make “larger-than-life” celebrities seem a tiny bit more human. Having now said that and posting my images here, I’m sure someone will copy my idea and everybody and their brothers will start shooting in the press room.

At any rate, here are some of my favorite press room portraits.

Arizona State Sun Devils basketball Ty Abbott.

See more press room portraits by clicking on the more link below.

NASCAR Sprint Cup – SUBWAY Fresh Fit 600 April 10, 2010 Phoenix International Raceway Part 3

I wanted to finish off the NASCAR Sprint Cup SUBWAY Fresh Fit 600 images before I moved on to some other images, but it turns out I just have way too many images to post them all in one story.  I’ll post another group and hope you enjoy these images as much as I enjoyed shooting them.

During the opening laps of the race everything was getting a little mundane, with the cars just going around, and around. The cars were a bit bunched up and things were very exciting for us photographers because every time the group of cars came by a big cloud of dust and track debris would get sucked behind them and pelt us photographers and our gear which is a bit like being in a sandstorm/dust storm.

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