There's a moment in a life of any motorsports photographer when you just want to see something different .
That time was for me 2 weeks ago when after a call with my friend "Freddie" ; after quick tchat got my first accreditation on a 24H race!
Amongst any other motorsports , I'm more of a rallye dude . I'm into rally since I'm big enough to follow the WRC championship in the 1990's .
Been a huge fan of Colin McRae and his Subaru period . So things were quite easy for me when I started photography , I'll be a motorsports photographer , and word was "never limit yourself to only one sport" Job done !
Arrived at Zolder Belgium , discovered that tiny but cute track , well known for it's Butte corner and tricky chicanes !
Joined Freddie around 1PM at the media center , grabbed a quick talk about life, then things became more carguy style whilst watching few iconic cars rolling down the long straight .Grabbed my flashy armband and here I am , I'm walking on track just before the official launch of this new 24H race !
Clicked some quick moody shots from the crowd , chatted with other colleagues , quick laughs and decision was made to shoot the start from corner 1. Yes you've heard me , "corner1" , normally on 99% of the tracks out there , corner 1 and especially inner corner will be red-zoned , not Zolder .
Time to grab the chance of having an inner shot from the start , decided playing it "safe" with 1/80 SH . Clock's ticking , 1600 arrived and boom first warmup lap is being sent , tested my settings on those first cars ; everything's good ready to shoot.
After few snaps we decided to move to the "kleine chinane" right before "sacramentshelling" .After grabbing the 1.4 extender from Freddie and transforming my 300 in a 420mm , an incredible hard crash happened . I didn't even noticed it till Freddie started shouting "wow F*#k saw what happened ? check your shots !" got that 911 GT3 Cup and at the background was a huge dust cloud! What an intense moment !
Then had to say bye to Freddie and decided to go Lone Wolf through the forest till reaching the back part of the "Butte" from "Sacramentshelling" .
Lightingh was getting gorgeous as we were getting close to golden hour , storytelling wasn't hard as well !
Everything was there , perfect scenery , perfect lighting , perfect line from all drivers . One word HEAVEN.
Stayed here for a while and decided to launch myself a challenge , capture some epic shots of that "flame shooting dragon" BMW .
After kind of completing this quick task , decided to go down the "Butte" and reached the "Villeneuve Chicane" Here the trick was to make the viewer understand the perspective and the relief of this chicane .
The cars were literally dropping their frontbumper 10 cm bellow the ground which was for me a perfect opportunity of using this beasty 300 converted 420 lense !
Finished the first part of the evening there , quickly checked the map and I decided to shoot the "Kleine Chicane" to grab some glowing brakes!
As experimented in the 24H Nürbürgring , when the deep night was settled , only thing to experiment was ultra los SH panshots , that worked quite good , at least better than what I expected !
Around 2 am , quickly checked the livestream and heard the magic word "oil on track" Started to run those 2KM towards the pitlane , as I expected a lot of teams to Box during the interruption.
Things went as predicted and the next 45 minutes transformed the usually quite calm pitlane into a hornet nest ! We're after almost 12H consecutive shooting , decided to grab few shots before reaching basecamp .
Alarm set 6 am to get those sunset shots !
Things turned differently as pitlane became really for the second time in this race , so plan changed => Pitlane#2.
After couple of shots decided to scour bit lower than I was the day before on turn 1 and decided to ride along this slope just before the "sterrenwachbocht".
To finish this epic race I walked my way up the hill , along the straight and ended up at the "Jacky IckxBocht" chicane.
Decided to get some front shots of the cars and tried to increase the perspective by tilting my lense down .
Loved that place, cars were flying by , could even feel the heat , smells from their engines .
What an absolute beast place to be !
Timer was about done , decided quickly to grab couple of ultra low back shots from the straight !
I especially love that Mustang that pops really good out of the background !
Time was over , congratulations to everyone and especially :
