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Since we’re still deep into the Supercross season, I wanted to keep the indoor theme going this week but talk about a shot I got at another form of indoor racing, Arenacross, a few years ago. I’m going to call this week’s column, “the happy accident”, as once in a while you plan your shots out meticulously, but something happens even better than you could have hoped for. In photography, it’s usually the other way around, as things rarely work out the way you hoped, so it makes it all the more exciting in those rare times when something magical comes together.
The race was the Chilliwack Arenacross, in 2016. For a couple of seasons, Future West had pyrotechnics at the finish line, during their races, and I had plenty of shots that were straight on, of the riding taking the win, with fireworks in the background. I can remember that at this particular race, the pyrotechnics were more of a “sparkler” effect and thought that maybe shooting more from the side would bring them into the shot instead of just being on each side of the finish line structure. Still, I couldn’t imagine how cool they would look when I got this shot of Noah McConahy taking the win that night.
The big thing with trying to get a finish line photo that has pyrotechnics is trying to anticipate the exposure. Things get pretty bright when the fire goes off, so I usually try to lower my exposure by at least 2-to 3 stops. Then I hope that my raw file can handle the rest. Shooting in an auto-exposure mode might also work, but you run the risk of the camera either under or overexposing the photo, depending on how bright the fireworks are. At Chilliwack, it’s usually so dark that my photos are underexposed anyways, so I only lowered my exposure by 1 stop for this image. The final image specs were 1/1000 of a second, an aperture of F2.8, and an iso of 5000.
This is definitely one of my favourite indoor images. When it came time to pick the photos for the 2016 MXP Photo Annual, I knew this was the shot for the cover. Certainly, one of my favourite covers that I’ve shot.
