Motor Racing:

During the nineteen eighties I regularly attended motor racing circuits such as Donington Park, Mallory Park, Silverstone, Oulton Park and Brands Hatch and taking in The Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder on three occasions.

Although a big motor racing fan, then as now, part of the enjoyment for me was that I looked on a day at the races as a photographic assignment, particularly for the Grand Prix F1 meetings - taking photos of the rich and famous - action photos and all that. Armed with my camera with long lens, though never quite long enough, particularly when you are set back behind a crash barrier, sometimes peering through catch fencing, or on one memorable occasion, my view being blocked by some German waving a super-8 movie camera trying to get his best shots of his beloved Bee-Em-Vay (BMW).

The sheer speed of the sport makes this type of photography difficult, standing on the Hangar straight at Silverstone trying to take a photo of an F1 car travelling over 200 mph is not the easiest thing to do. By practice panning and timing myself to the movement of the car I could often capture an image, only to be disappointed when later viewing the results to find the camera was slightly out of focus. Hopefully though, I did managed to get one or two half decent photos. These were all taken on 35mm film and have been scanned in. The black and white photographs are what I processed myself in the days when I did my own developing and printing (scrambling around in the dark, developer, stop bath, fixer) - Thank goodness for digital photography