Back in 2008 I read an article on the Strobist Blog about how David Hobby mounted a few remote flashes inside the cockpit of a helicopter to light up the interior at sunset. Here is a link to the original article.

Strobist.com

I loved the shots that David got and it really inspired me. Ever since I read the article I always wanted to try it inside an offroad vehicle. I thought it would be a cool, unique shot that hasn’t been done before in that sport. I originally wanted to try it in desert racing, but it just wouldn’t be too practical because of the distances the vehicles are from you most of the time, making battery life an issue. Also I was worried that the flash would be too distracting during racing conditions for the driver and co-driver.

A few years went by and I never really gave it a try, but it was always in the back of my mind. The thought came back recently before a LOORRS race, trying to think of something different to do while shooting at a track I’ve shot at before. I already planned on mounting a remote camera on Kyle Leduc’s truck during the race, so I figured why not add a remote flash into the mix.

You can read up on the remote camera here.

David Hobby used three Nikon flashes inside the helicopter to light it up entirely. I would go a little different route and decided to use one Canon 550ex flash for two reasons. First reason was that I had less space to light up. The inside of the helicopter has a lot more square footage then the inside Kyle Leduc’s Pro 4 Unlimited truck. The second reason is that I only own one flash . To fire the remote flash I would use my Pocketwizard Plus II’s.

The one photo I imagined using the remote flash for was a shot far away of Kyle launching off a jump, with the background and vehicle dark, and the cab nice and lit up.. The track in Vegas has a jump perfect for this so I was excited to give it a try. There was one main problem in that all the practice and racing is done in the middle of the day. This meant that to get a dark background I would have to underexpose by either shooting at a very fast shutter speed, or with a very small aperture. Fast shutter speed was out of the question because I was limited to 1/250th shooting with the flash. I could use a small aperture but then would the flash be powerful enough to overpower the daylight?

Thats where a ND -0.9 Filter comes into play. Basically what this does is blocks some of the light going into the lens, making your camera think its 3 stops darker outside. By adding one to the lens I could shoot at 1/250th, and still underexpose the shot to have the flash overpower the daylight. Flash was set to full power manually.

I mounted the flash and pocketwizard in a very sturdy, professional, and strong way. Zipties.

The only place I could mount the flash was along the A-Pillar of the cage on the opposite side of the driver. Anywhere else and it would be to direct in his face, or be blocked by something. Here is a photo showing how the flash lit up the compartment.

I had Kyle get in the truck and fired a few test shots, and he said that the flash didn’t seem to bother him, so we were all set. I decided to only use the remote flash during practice/qualifying for the chance that it did start to bother him, I’d hate to have him look directly into the flash and go blind during the race. And just to be 100% sure it didn’t bother him, I fired a test shot the first lap in practice, and told him to give me a hand sign when he passed me (I was in the corner right after the jump), and I could turn off the pocketwizard on my camera, which in turn would stop firing the flash.

As he came by on the first lap, he didn’t run into the k-rail from being blinded, and didn’t give me the middle finger so we were ready to rock.

On all the shots I shot at 1/250th so that I could get the background as dark as I could, while the flash still lit Kyle up. I could of just used the flash as a fill light, and I think I may do that in the future, but for this time I wanted that dramatic look. With practice and qualifying only being a few laps, that meant I would only get a handful of tries to get the shots I wanted. Here are the three that I liked the best.

This first photograph is the one I envisioned getting while thinking about the shot. Its Kyle Leduc launching his truck in the air with only him lit up while the rest of the scene is dark.

This next shot is the turn immediately after the jump in the last shot. I like it because the truck is in a full drift around the corner and Kyle is looking right at you. The background is a bit lighter then the last photo becasue the sun was to my back, versus shooting more into the sun. Ignore that I cut off part of his front tire, just keep your eyes on him. Ignore the tire…

This last shot is at another location on the track. With this shot I didn’t use the ND filter, but still underexposed so the background wasn’t as dark, but gives a nice contrasted look. Here you can see how the shot looked with the remote flash fired, and one without on the next lap.

Thanks to David Hobby for getting me inspired, and for Kyle Leduc for letting me blind him!

Like most events that I go to, I usually have a few goals in mind regarding a certain shot or angle I want to get. This past weekend I headed out to Las Vegas for Rounds 5 & 6 of the Lucas Oil Offroad Racing Series to cover short course racing. For this weekend my goal was to get some unique shots using a remote camera and a remote flash inside one of the race trucks. A few years ago I mounted a camera in Kyle Leduc’s Prolite truck, and again in Brad Lovell’s and Becca Webster’s Rockcrawler, and while I got a few decent shots I always wanted to try it again. Here are a few shots from a few years ago.

While I got a unique angle from mounting the camera on the vehicles, I didn’t get anything that stood out as being eye catching. So move ahead a few years and Kyle Leduc was more then happy to let me try it again.

The setup is pretty simple as far as how I mounted it. The whole thing is mounted to the cage with a piece of tubing one size larger then the tubing it mounts to. The tube mount was cut in half so that it sits flush. A bolt was then welded to the top of the tubing so that a ball head could attach to it. I decided on this method because the ballhead would let me move around the camera at different angles, and also because it is very sturdy and won’t break off under the vibration and shock from the racing. When the mount is hose clamped down it doesn’t budge at all. Here is a photo of the setup, I put tape over the mount so that the hose clamps can’t come loose.

To fire the camera (which was a Canon 20D) I used a Pocketwizard Multimax, and used the intervalometer feature. Last time I did the remote I just used Pocketwizard Plus II’s and fired the remote everytime the race truck was near me. The benefit is that I could control when it was taking a photo, but the downfall was that I was limited to what was in front of me. I decided on the intervalometer this time so that I could just let the camera take the photos and whatever it captured it captured. I ran the risk of missing something, but because I set the camera to take a photo every second, in the 15 minute race I would walk away with about 600 photos, so the chances of getting a good shot were a lot higher.

As long as Kyle didn’t roll his truck and crush the camera. More on that in a bit.

For the settings of the camera itself I set the ISO to 400, and put it in AV mode shooting at f8. The races are in the middle of the day, so shooting at ISO 400 and f8 would yield me a high enough shutter speed to freeze anything and not get any shutter blur. I also set it at f8 so that I would have a wider depth of field to get as much in focus as I could. I pre-focused the camera, taped up the focus ring and hoped for the best.

The camera itself was completely out in the open with no cage work around it to protect it in case of a rollover. That’s when buying used camera gear for cheap comes into play. Canon 20D’s can be found online for around $300. Before I show the photos that I got, here is a photo of it mounted on the truck during the race, and another of Kyle Leduc early in the race in the turn I was shooting at. I wonder if he did it on purpose knowing I was watching, luckily he saved it.

The end result were some images that I was happy with, and came away with one photo that captured what I was looking for.

Here is the photo with four other race trucks in the shot, one (Monster Energy/Toyota Rick Huseman) landing right behind him, and three others still in the air. I got lucky and all four race trucks are visible and not cutoff, and also happened to have some nice clouds in the sky behind them.

I’d be lying if I didn’t have a smile on my face after going through the shots right after the race. When you set a goal for yourself and everything seems to fall into place it feels pretty good. Here are a few other shots from the remote before the Pocketwizard became a magnet for a rock.

Kyle’s crew chief Brent.

Thanks to Kyle Leduc for letting me put the camera on his truck, and more importantly for not crushing it. Also thanks to his crew chief Brent for getting everything turned on in staging so I could be on the track.

The weekend of October 26th marked the second to last race of the year for Best In The Desert.  The Silver State 300 is a unique race because its based out of Alamo, NV and uses parts of Nevada that don’t typically see races.  Because of this I was excited to go and have the opportunity to shoot some new areas.

My weekend started Thursday night in which I started my drive after work.  My plan was to crash in Jean, NV overnight and wake up in the morning to continue on to Alamo, NV rather then make the 400 mile drive all at once.  The normal routine at a desert race is to hit up contingency the day before the race, but this time around since it was 90 miles away in Mesquite, I decided to use my time on friday to prerun and scout out potential photo spots.

Since I wasn’t able to make the Pre-Run Fun a few weeks back, I overlaid the race course on to Google Earth to try and see if I could find access roads to different spots on the course.  I mapped out a few potential spots on my GPS so that on Friday I could spend the day checking them all out to see if they would work.

The first spot I was going to shoot at, I wanted to be early in the course so that I could catch as many racers as I could before I headed out to the next spot to catch the leaders.  I ended up going to race mile 39, which was right before the first paved road crossing.  The reason I chose that spot was because it offered a few different angles rather then just having one shot of all the vehicles.  In the below photo from Google Earth you can see the different spots, all within walking distance of each other.

Rebilas Diagram

Before the road crossing they would come from behind a mountain range.

Shot from far away

As they got closer there was a section of high speed rollers.

Shot as they come closer

A little farther up course, and after the rollers, there was a nice right hand turn with some soft silt built up on the outside of the turn.

The last option at that spot was about 30 yards past the turn, the course made a slight left. On the outside of the turn was a gradual slope, so I laid down on the ground to shoot the vehicles coming head on before they made the turn.

Looking at the next spot I was going to go to, I figured out I could stay at the first spot for about 1 hour and 45 minutes. This left me enough time to shoot as many vehicles as I could, and still catch the leaders through Caliente, which was around race mile 180.

This is where the Pigeon story comes into play. While driving through the town of Caliente, a pigeon decided to play chicken with me. He was standing in the middle of my lane eyeballing me. 99% of all birds in the road fly off before you get the chance to turn them into chicken fingers, but for some reason this bird decided to stand his ground while my truck approached. Keep in mind the speed limit in Caliente is 25 mph so the bird had plenty of time to make his move. So I’m within about 10 feet of this apparently blind bird, and I’m not going to slam on my brakes or swerve, so I think if he doesn’t move he should clear the underbelly of my truck. Well low and behold after I drove over him (figuratively) I look in my rear view window and see him flopping around on the street. I win! Next time use those things called wings my friend. (side note to the side story, driving back through the town later in the day he looked like a pancake).

Anyways, so the spot I wanted to shoot at next was an old wooden railroad bridge. The unique thing about the shot is that the Trophy Trucks and Class 1 cars barely fit, with some of the cars having to put one tire on the outside edge.

I also decided to try and break my remote camera again and set it in the middle of the bridge for a different angle.

The first few cars I was shooting way too soon, but actually like the look of it.

Finally got the timing down.

I was able to catch the lead group go through the bridge, but because my next spot I wanted to go to was only 120 race miles away, and about an hour and a half drive I couldn’t stay there very long. The last spot was at race mile 308, as the course first approaches the dry lake bed. If you know me, you know that I love to shoot silt, and when I checked out the area the night before there was already some good silt areas from the prerun.

This section of the course has a long straight away along a graded road, then makes a 90 turn onto the lake bed. My idea was to shoot the cars as they pitch it onto the dry lake bed and through a large silt tail. When I got there I noticed a good sized silt pocket that formed around a wash crossing so I had a decision to make. Stay at the turn or shoot the silt pocket instead? I chose to shoot at the wash and glad I did. While some vehicles just flat footed it over the area, those that checked up or hit it wrong put on a great show.

Here you can see the left hand turn from far away.

Left hand turn before silt pocket

And here is the silt pocket.

I love silt

Earlier in the day another photographer that was there said a few bike guys went over the bars. That brings up an interesting dilemma for media dorks. If you are at a spot on course where there is a potential for a crash, what do you do? Do you hide in the bushes and hope the car doesn’t see you? Do you flag them down and have them slow down? Is it the driver/co-drivers responsibility or the spectators? Typically when race vehicles see bright orange vests its usually a sign of a danger ahead and they do slow down.

If a spot is bad enough where someone might get hurt I think its important for us to try and minimize the danger. That actually happened to me and my friend Dirk at BITD Vegas 2 Reno last year. We were at another silt pocket that wasn’t marked as a danger, and a few riders went over the bars pretty good. The dust was really bad and people weren’t slowing down so we ran to the road crossing up course and got some danger markers and marked it on our own. After we did that everyone slowed down. While it didn’t make for good photos its better then having a hurt rider.

This was my last spot for the day, so I shot here until the sun went down. Once it dropped below the mountains, the wind stopped which made for zero visibility, so I called it a race and headed home. After 1000 miles of driving, 1 pound of sunflower seeds, a case of water, 42 nutter butters, and a dead pigeon my journey was over.

Here is the last shot of the day for me, I liked it because not only is the silt being thrown, but the lighting adds a nice touch to it, and you can see a haze of dust just sitting on the ground from the last car that went through.

Here are a few more photos from the race that I liked, and you can see the full gallery up on my website. http://www.highrevphoto.com/photos

Up next for me is the LOORRS race in Surprise, AZ Oct 17-18th, so stay tuned for more photos!