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Smoke On

Published 10/10/08 | Last modified 27/08/24

You guessed it, RedBull Air Race! This was the second race held at Porto, Portugal and I couldn’t miss it.

To tell the truth I was more excited about the photo opportunities than the race itself… but that’s me.

Lessons learned:

Lesson #1. The early bird gets the worm, the late one gets a lot of heads sticking out in front of the the lens.

Preparation is key. This year I had two bodies, pre-rigged the monopod to hold the shutter cables for both cameras, higher speed CF cards, etc. But I failed to get my ass there on time… and ended up with this nice perspective:

Still, it wasn’t all bad. Plenty of waiting gives you plenty to look at and shoot and so I did before the smoke trails came.

But not before some Breitling action.

And then the race begins… and I couldn’t shoot sh**t. Luckily I had an important piece of gear that allowed me to reposition myself.

Lesson #2

Using a 70-200mm f2.8 and a Peleng 8mm fisheye simultaneously while standing on a folding stool is possible. But not advisable.

Now I could take head free shots.

And some top perspective shots of the crowd.

And some airplanes racing around.

While editing the shots I noticed spectators sitting on roofs and other ill advised places and decided to crop them. It’s a rather different view on the show.

The following shots are 100% crops. They’re blurred because I was tracking the planes.