During the prologue of the 2016 Newfoundland Targa two of my good friends where racing their Mazda Miata and asked me to take some pictures. Corey Prosser and Mike Mercer were entered for the second year running and I was more than happy to get out and get some pictures for them.

I managed to get out while they were racing the Flatrock and Bauline stages, just the start of the week, and capture a few pictures.

The challenging thing about car race photography, such as this (where they do at most two passes) is that you only get one shot. A track race the cars come around over and over, with Targa, they do the stage twice and that is that. If you miss your window of opportunity, screw up in some way, the weather changes, etc… you could leave with no photos.

It’s fine if you’re just shooting randomly with no true targets in mind except to make a nice photo of any car that passes by you, but it’s a challenge to get right in one shot of a specific car in varying lighting conditions, inconsistent speeds and race lines and all the other normal factors of taking a photo.

The featured image above, was shot 200mm on a remotely mounted and triggered camera down by the ocean while I shot with the 500mm further up the hill.

Once they moved to the Bauline stage I switched to the 70-200 for some tighter shots on the way down then back to the 500mm on their way back after finding a neat angle a little lower to the road to get a slight “looking up” perspective on them as they passed.