As a long time member of the BMW CCA (Car Club of America) I was recently asked to spend a weekend at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course photographing one of the club’s premier events – their High Performance Driver’s Education course (HPDE). And I was happy to do so – I’ve volunteered to do some photography for the club at other events. I believe in the club, enjoy being a member, and enjoy having the opportunity to contribute beyond my membership dues. As it happens, I’d never previously been to the Mid-Ohio track in Mansfield Ohio. Probably because it’s not exactly close to where I live in Ohio – about a 2-hour drive. My plan would be to get up EARLY (4am) on Saturday morning and drive out to the track with the goal of arriving between 7 and 7:30am.

The club really didn’t get into too many specifics of what they were looking for photo wise from me. I assumed I’d probably get some more direction on arrival, but going in I had the following couple of objectives:

-Try to get multiple epic photos of every vehicle in the course. Something memorable. Something they can brag about back home and show the picture. This will add a lot of value to the experience, and when shared on social media, might get some folks interested in enrolling in future courses.

-Tell the HPDE story. The club also wanted me to write an article encapsulating the experience and the education received. I want to make sure I get photos which capture the essence of what is taught and learned over the weekend.

The club would be covering my hotel room on Saturday. I was also told that there would be water available for staff, so that was one less thing to worry about. I REALLY lucked out with the weather – Mid 70-s to 80 degrees high for both days. Most of this summer has seen 90 degree plus weather with high humidity and quite a bit of rain, but HPDE weekend was downright pleasant.

The first order of business was to get approved for a photo vest through the track. Fortunately the club worked that – and got me introduced to the Marketing and Social Media Coordinator for the track in the process. That will make it a ton easier to get a photo vest at future events held at the track should I have need. TIP: think through the benefits that can be gained by doing a “free shoot.”

Next I needed to think through and select the gear to bring. Given that this was a smaller event at a smaller track, I was told I could actually drive around the track and park relatively close to where I would be shooting. The vehicles would rotate about every hour and a half so I could potentially stay camped out in a single location for the majority of the day.

GEAR

My plan was to primarily shoot with my Canon RF 70-200 F2.8 mated to my Canon R5 Mark II. I’d also bring my Canon R6 Mark II, and have my Voitlander RF 50mm f1.0 in case I wanted to get closer to the students and get more portrait style photos. I’d also bring along my Canon RF 15-35 F2.8 for getting wider shots of the track and facilities – more photo journalistic story telling. On my 70-200, I’d have a 77mm K&F Concepts Nano-X CPL, and on my Voiglander 50mm, I’d have a 67mm K&F Concepts True Color ND/CPL filters.

THE SHOOT

The morning of the event I was on the road at 5am and on the track at shortly after 7am.

Mid-Ohio is pretty easy to navigate – I entered at Gate 3 and hit the security shack immediate after entering the property and was able to pick up my photo vest. I then checked in with the club leadership, got some water, and headed out to the track, looking for “port holes” in the fence to shoot through. The track does have a photographer’s map that was somewhat helpful (I’ve never been great with maps):

Over the course of the 1st day, I found four different locations from which to shoot that I liked, and noted which positions were best for what time of day. Some of the locations did require me to climb ladders over fencing to get to the gate port holes:

I set up my R5 Mark II to shoot in its fasted mode and also enabled pre-continuous shooting (3 shot limit). Over the course of the weekend, I nearly filled my 512GB ProGrade Digital CF Express Type B memory card. That’s nearly ten thousand 45 megapixel images. Insane. I do wish there was a way to scale back the 30 frames per second using the electronic shutter to something like 15 or even 20 FPS. It shoots 12 FPS in mechanical shutter mode which probably would have been sufficient, but if you want to enable pre-continuous shooting you have to use the electronic shutter. Perhaps a future firmware upgrade will allow you to more discretely configure the shooting speed.

When I got back home I was able to scale the approximately 9000 photos down to about 200 that I thought were “keepers.” Here’s a selection of some of my favorites:

I even managed to get a nice one of my car with the track in the background:

I had them all edited, posted to the Buckeye BMW Club Chapter Facebook group, and uploaded to the club Google drive by Wednesday. So essentially turned around 200 photos in 3 days. Even though it was a “free” photo shoot I treated it with the same sense of urgency and professionalism I would a “paid” gig. The workflow wasn’t too hateful in Lightroom. The first order of business was marking about the first ~220 “keepers” which took a good chuck of time. Then it was just a matter of straightening, cropping for composition, and applying light filter enhancements. For 90% of the photos I just applied the native Lightroom Adaptive Subject (Vibrant) filter. In some cases due to lighting, I needed to selectively boost exposure to wheels and grills – most of the parade lap photos required more touch up as it took place around 12noon. Worst.  Possible. Light.

This event was a good primer for me as next month I’ll be shooting the IMSA Battle on the Bricks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I shot this race last year for the club, but didn’t have a photographer’s vest so was limited in terms of what I could get. This year I’ve been promised a vest. Fingers crossed.