It’s #wheelswednesday and in Part 2 of the Car Portraits series, I’m shifting today’s normal focus from the cars to the people who drive them. Today’s portrait is one I made of my wife, Mary, on a day when she was driving a track day at Second Creek Raceway.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
With tennis, you can go pick up a racket, take a lesson, and understand how much talent and skill it takes to be as good as the top pros. Same with golf: pick up a club. But not many can go out and get in a race car and experience a drive at over 200 miles an hour.—Mario Andretti
Today I wanted to post one of my favorite pictures of Mary that was made on the last day that Second Creek Raceway was open before turning it over to earth movers so that a contractor could build some homes there, which, I believe, they have yet to do…
At the Track with Mary
The classic definition of environmental portraiture is making a portrait that illuminates a subject’s life and is made in their living or working environment. By photographing a person in their natural surroundings, a photographer can portray the subject’s essence, rather than merely producing merely a likeness of their physical features.
The upside of creating an environmental portrait is that it’s more than possible the subject will be more relaxed and likely to be themselves, as opposed to being in a camera room, which no matter how nice it may be, can be intimidating for some people.
Like all rules of thumb, there is some truth to what I just said but out here in the real world the truth is that for some people there is a real fear of photography and some are never going to be comfortable in front of a camera no matter where you photograph them. For the photographer, the advantage of creating an environmental portrait is that you have a much better chance of capturing as much of a subject’s true personality than they will never let you see in a studio.
How I made this portrait: Here’s Mary at the track in her Tortuga Racing driving suit with her Miata track day car. In this environmental portrait, her helmet serves as prop and the classic hand on hip pose serves as a counterbalance as she leans rather than sits on the car’s fender. The whole riff on capturing a subject’s essence seems especially true here. This portrait was made while Mary was in the middle of six-week radiation therapy for breast cancer—she’s fine now and cancer free—and that smile is real not canned. The portrait was made with a Canon EOS 1D Mark II N and EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens and shot using available light.
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My book Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography is full of tips, tools and techniques for glamour and boudoir photography and includes information on all of the cameras used as well as the complete exposure data for each image. New and Used books are available from Amazon starting around ten bucks.as I write this. Kindle version is $19.99 for those preferring a digital format