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[OM] First Arenacross shoot-Holy Smokes!

Subject: [OM] First Arenacross shoot-Holy Smokes!
From: Stephen Scharf <scharfsj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 23:15:30 -0800
I had my first racing shoot for the year on Saturday. The AMA 
National Arenacross round at Sacramento, last Sat. night. I did come 
away with some good stuff, though. Those interested can check out my 
posting  on SportsShooter.com:

http://www.sportsshooter.com/members.html?id=1138

Curious to see what y'all think....

Background:
Arenacross is a motocross-like event similar to Supercross (which is 
run in a big football or baseball stadium) except it is indoors, and 
in much, much tighter confines. Imagine stuffing a Supercross event 
held at Pac Bell Park inside the Cow Palace, and you'll know what I 
mean. The event was held in the Arco Arena, home of the Sacramento 
Kings Basketball team.

It was a tough shoot. The confines are very tight, and speed of the 
action is furious. Imagine a motocross at some insane video-game type 
of speed. You have 125 and 250cc two-stroke racing dirt bikes in 
really tight confines, going really fast and zig-zagging back and 
forth in the building over the whoop-de-doos and rhythm section, 
bikes crossing one direction and then the other. It's tough finding a 
place to stand let alone take photographs without worrying about 
literally getting taken out by a flying motorcycle. One photographer 
almost had his head taken off by an airborne 65cc two stroke that was 
literally flying sideways when a rider came off a jump and crashed 
and his bike took off through the air. The photographer shouldn't 
have been in spot in that was an impact zone, and the course marshall 
flipped and threw him out there. The course is topped off by a huge 
jump that gets bikes as high as 43 ft in the air. The lighting was 
tough...there were ghastly fluorescents that gave everything a 
greenish cast, and then once the racing started, these incredibly 
bright floods came on that emulated the sun, or so it seemed! This 
mish-mash of lighting plus shooting with flash meant finding a proper 
white balance was really hit or miss. I shot primarily with the 
70-200/2.8 at ISO 800; it was very tiring and my back was aching by 
the end of the night (started at 7, ended at 11 PM, no rest for the 
weary); there were literally only minutes between races. The action 
is so fast and furious that I shot 244 frames in the first heat race 
of 8 laps....which lasted about 7 minutes!



-Stephen.





-- 


2001 CBR600F4i - Fantastic!

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