Behind The Lens With James Lissimore

This week the Supercross series is off to one of my favourite Supercross races to cover, the Arlington Supercross, near Dallas, Texas. Unlike a round like Anaheim 1, where the atmosphere and the anticipation are the main draw, it’s the stadium itself in Arlington that makes it a highlight of the season to attend. The shrine to football that Jerry Jones has built for his Dallas Cowboys football team is something else and definitely worth a trip if you ever get the chance. As you are driving in from Dallas in the morning, you can see it, like a big spaceship, on the horizon. Once inside, the massive big screen that spans the entire stadium floor is mesmerizing. I find you end up watching the racing on there instead of actually looking at the track.

As an East Coast opener many times, I’ve attended this race a lot over the years so there were a lot of images to pick through for this week’s edition of Behind the Lens. Ultimately, I settled on this shot of Ryan Villopoto taking the victory at the 2013 edition of the race. 

This is an image that has been lurking on my website as a portfolio shot for many years. I’ve always liked the juxtaposition of RV taking the win, the fireworks, and the reverse of the image in the big screen overhead. I find it tough to shoot SX with a wide-angle lens – there’s a lot of clutter, and since you’re quite limited where you can stand, often tough to get close enough to get the rider displayed prominently enough in the frame. This shot worked out well, though, and has long been a favourite SX shot of mine. 

As far as the technical specs go, I shot this frame at 24mm on my 24-120mm lens, with a shutter speed of 1/1000 and F5.

I don’t remember much about this race except for it was Zach Bell’s first Supercross and he grabbed the early lead in his heat before suffering a huge crash with two laps to go. I’ve included that shot as well, as I’ll never forget that.