Lakepipe, thanks for reminding me about the “lessons learned taking pictures at Bonneville” deal I talked about. I’m going to write this from the perspective of an amateur photographer that’s had a few things published online, but with little professional experience. I took my camera to Bonneville purely for my personal enjoyment.
Here’s a list of the gear I brought to the salt flats last year:
Canon T2i (550d) DSLR camera
Canon 70-200mm f4L lens
Canon 50mm f1.4 lens
Canon 18-55mm kit lens
Rokinon 8mm lens
Extra batteries, memory cards, and filters
I thought this was a good setup, but I did find myself wishing I had more zoom sometimes. This year I’m packing a 100-400mm lens and enough NV filters to work on all the lenses (except the 8mm).
If you don’t have a long lens and can’t spring for a nice one, consider renting a lens. There are several places online that will ship you a VERY nice lens at a fraction of the cost to buy one. Even better, in many big cities there are local places to rent lenses from. If you enjoy photography but only go to a few events like this a year, I’d recommend renting if you are comfortable with it. I owned my 70-200mm last year but sold it because I rarely used it. Now I rent big, humongous, way nicer than my old stuff lenses when I want them.
As far as taking care of your gear – some photographers on the salt flats are very picky about not changing lenses because they claim the salty air will contaminate the sensor and lens, etc… I never had a problem with this, but most of the times that I changed lenses were in the car. Of course, make sure you always have some kind of filter on the front of your lenses. I didn’t drop a lens on the salt, but I can only imagine that it would scratch up the front element because of all of the rough salt crystals everywhere. In my opinion even a $2 Chinese UV filter from eBay is better than nothing.
From my whopping 1 year of experience at Bonneville, there are 2 kinds of photography at Bonneville: Static and Moving. Some general photography principles apply to both:
Bring NV Filters or some way to cut down the glare. I used an NV and a circular polarizer with good results last year. The contrast was much better and more lifelike in my experience. I think that the sheer amount of light on the salt overpowers what most camera sensors are designed for. 90% of the pro photographers I saw on the starting line were using some sort of dark filter.
Try to get above the horizon. What I mean by this is that it looks best to have the whole vehicle appear with the salt as the background and then have the sky above that. So many pictures from the salt flats show the horizon cutting through the vehicle, but having the whole vehicle with the salt behind it looks much cleaner IMO. The opposite of this is also true if you shoot from below and can make the whole background the sky.
Talk to everyone. I can be an introvert at times and have found that it’s easy to hide away behind the camera lens. At Bonneville pretty much everyone has a story to tell. If you are standing on the side of the course spectating and a stranger is standing beside you just start talking about cars – especially the ones that are running down the course. You never know what crazy stories you will hear. While this isn’t exactly a photography principle like the golden ratio or anything that artsy fartsy, I think it’s important to know the stories behind what we’re photographing even if it’s not from a professional perspective.
Advice for Static photography:
I wound up using the 18-55mm kit lens most of the time I was at the starting line. For being out in the middle of nowhere, the starting line is surprisingly crowded and it makes it difficult to use anything longer than 70mm. Many of the pro photographers will be standing on the course just beyond the starting line. Try not go get in their way. However, there is usually a spot designated for spectators to stand somewhat behind the pro photographers (at least on course 1). If you have a longer lens this can be a cool place to stand because you get to catch the cars leaving the push truck or out by themselves as they start the run.
In the pits I found myself using my 70-200mm lens the most. The pits are spaced out over a couple of miles so things are far away. Using the 70-200mm I was able to get a lot of neat candid shots of people wrenching on their vehicles. I particularly like walking through the pits at sunrise. It’s a fascinating sight and I think that it shows what the real spirit of land speed racing is about. As if people aren’t already crazy for bringing a race vehicle thousands of miles from home into the middle of nowhere, they wake up before dawn and begin preparing for the runs ahead.
We camped in the bend last year and will be camping in the bend this year as well. There will be tons of cool vehicles throughout the campgrounds. I was fortunate enough to find this beautiful ’29 Ford Model A show up beside us one night. We started talking to the guys and wound up hanging out for hours. I asked if they brought a nice camera to take pictures of the car with. They said no. I took a few pictures that night and then talked the owner into taking me to the salt in the morning for a quick photo session. Not bad for a $350 camera, $50 kit lens, a cooler to stand on for perspective / tripod duties, and a Maglite for a flash at night. The point here is: go talk to everybody and don’t be afraid to try anything to get some cool shots. Taking pictures of this car was one of my most enjoyable parts of the trip (and yes, I emailed the owner all the pictures).
Advice for Moving photography:
I think that any lens that’s at least 200mm in length is sufficient for a crop sensor camera like my T2i. The hardest part about getting good images at speed is the focus. Even at a neutral aperture (8-11 on most lenses) it’s still hard to get in focus because the distances are so extreme (you can see for miles). Pro’s get around this problem by using $3,000 lenses. My $400 used 70-200mm f4L lens worked well, but even I had problems sometimes (streamliners and motorcycles are REALLY small when they are far away and going 200+ mph). What I would up doing sometimes was by bracketing my shots in a certain area. For example, I’d set my lens to focus for when cars passed directly in front of me and only shoot then. The bad part of that is that you’ll probably miss it when cars spin or wreck.
Remember that thing I said about bracketing shots? That’s going to be the best advice you read in this little article. While the pictures you’ve seen of the salt flats show a huge empty place with a blank horizon as the background, it turns out that there are support vehicles, timing trailers, and timing lights scattered through the background on the salt flats. These can be difficult to see on the little lcd screens on your camera. The best advice I have is to find a place to shoot on the course that has nothing behind it. This will provide the purest pictures of the vehicles flying down the course. Of course the longer the lens you have, the better the choice you will have for finding an shot without any obstructions.
I suggest using the “tv” mode on a DSLR (at least Canon’s…) to select exposure priority. Try a few different exposures and see what is working for you. In my opinion, the best look for a car in motion is when the body is perfectly in focus, the background is blurred as it flies by, and the wheels are still visibly moving. Cars of different speeds will require different exposures to get the same look. Experiment with it – that’s ½ the fun of lugging around an SLR.
If you find yourself photographing a wreck my advice is to keep shooting as the action is happening. That might sound crazy, but for documentation I think it’s the best strategy. Once the wreck is over, stay where you are and let the emergency teams handle the situation. I captured pictures of one bad wreck that had me shivering afterwards. At the event I only showed these pictures to the person I was traveling with and with a tech inspector that found out that I had pictures. After the event I found the owner of the car’s contact information on this forum and said that I could send him the pictures. He accepted and was glad to see that there were pictures of it as it happened.
Hopefully this advice will help newcomers create better pictures on the salt. I really enjoyed snapping away pictures last year and I can’t wait to get back to the salt this year.
