Pic Spocket

Last weekend was the 2010 edition of the 2010 Red Bull Air Race stop in Windsor. Just back from Europe, I made some time to go with Corinne at the river to attend the qualification day and photograph this unusual event for the 3rd year in a row. I do not get to use the big camera anymore (no time!), so this was the perfect opportunity.

I have the collection of shots quite similar to the previous years. While very fast shutter speed is good to freeze the action, it makes the pictures look a bit static…

The red bull helicopter is never far, getting footage for television broadcast.

Teams on boats are always ready to put air pylons back in shape after a plane hit them.

This year, I also made sure to capture a few shots of the overall scene, to get a better sense of scale. These are really looking better in 1000 pixel wide (see album link at the bottom of the post)

Finally, I got a serie of very nice shots using a panning technique: deliberately using a slow shutter speed while tracking the subject so that you get the motion blur effect on the background. It’s hard to do, and you get a lot of missed pictures, but the ones that come out good are usually very dynamic. Here is a collection of these successful shots.

Finally, many more pictures and larger versions available in the album below!

2010 Red Bull Air Race

Next photo opportunity: Fireworks on the Detroit River on June 21. Stay tuned!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2010 at 11:16 pm and is filed under Album update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.