Flat Track Racing

Today I had the opportunity to photograph the Vintage Dirt Track Racing Association races at the OKC Fairgrounds on Saturday night. Unfortunately I arrived about 30 minutes before the rain began so I only had time for a couple of photographs. Like most photojournalist shots, time was of the essence and there was no time for posing and little time for setup. Attaching my SB-800 to a light stand and triggering it with an on-camera SU-800, I grabbed these shots before the downpour arrived. This first shot used a bare SB-800 zoomed out to 25mm, set to 1/8 power. My D2X was set to ISO-100 and I was using a 35mm F2 prime lens. Exposure was on full manual at F4.5 and 1/125 second. Again, the aperture was used to set the flash exposure, and the shutter was used for the ambient sky.

The sprinkles started right as I was setting up for this next photo. This time I wanted off-camera light that was a bit less harsh, so I put in my Wescott 42" folding umbrella on a light stand with the SB-800 set to 1/4 power. The wind was picking up so a recruited a bystander to hold the umbrella and stand while I shot using my D2x set to ISO-100 using a 20 mm prime lens. Since the umbrella soaked up more light than the bare SB-800, the aperture was opened up to F2.8 for proper exposure. If I had time I could have increased the power of the strobe or bumped my ISO, but the wet conditions added a bit of urgency. As it was getting darker, my shutter speed was down to 1/13 of a second to expose for the darkening sky.

It pays to know your equipment so you can work fast, and the off-camera light mixed with the ambient light from the sky added drama to the shots.