I'm going to be appearing at the San Francisco Dainese store again in February and I anticipate still more questions about photography in addition to those about what it's like to work in the MotoGP paddock, so I thought I'd post something photography-related here for those of you who enjoy taking pictures at the races.
The above image of Marco Simoncelli at Indy is one of my personal favorites from 2011, and I thought it would be useful when talking about what a photographer can do in the darkroom, whether that's one that smells of chemicals or the digital version. While some photographers still lament the loss of film as a medium for various and often quite legitimate reasons, I am grateful for the opportunities to start with one image and end up with another via digital tools more powerful than those in the wet darkroom. This image is a good example of how digital tools turned one image into something much different, and ultimately a photograph that I place among my best of the season.
So here's a rare opportunity to see some of my unedited photographs, straight out of the camera. The series shown below begins as Simoncelli has come into the pits at Indy and dismounted. As he walks back into the box, his chief mechanic, Aligi Deganello, gives him a supportive fist, which at first I thought was my photograph. As I saw that gesture through the lens I got a little jolt of excitement that I'd just caught a nice moment....more