I like to shoot film because it's scary and difficult. Did I get the shot? Who knows!? Is it properly exposed? Anyone's guess! There's really no reason to do it unless you love that thrill.
So what better medium to capture Formula 1, the sport where people fly across the world to drive nowhere at 200+ MPH and anti-lock brakes are banned because they'd make the cars too easy to drive.
When Aston Martin came knocking with a chance to get Gear Patrol to the 2023 Miami Grand Prix, I knew exactly what I had to do. Here are the five things I wish I'd known before I did it.
Don't overprepare
If you acquire ever-weirder film cameras for evermore esoteric purposes, it will be tempting to bring them all. I've got about seven cameras that can take pictures worth printing. So in an exercise of supreme restraint, I settled on just five. Then, begrudgingly, four. Only three fit in my bag. At the end of the day, I only used two.
Like any sporting event, an F1 Grand Prix is a mix of chaotic crowd commotion and an hour or two of roughly the same scene from a static angle. The precise proportions of each depend on whether you have grandstand seats or are milling around general admission, but two main types of photos present themselves: the ones that will wait for you and ones that will not. So I brought my fully-manual Yashica-Mat TLR with its juicy 6x6 negatives and 12-shot rolls for the former and my lighting-fast zone-focus 35mm point-and-shoot Olympus XA2 for the latter. In terms of film, I brought some Cinestill 400D and Fuji Pro 400H in 120 as well as Cinestill 800T and Kodak Gold 200 in 35mm plus some Kodak Ektar 100 in both.
I'm happy to report my camera pairing worked fantastically. The XA2 stayed in my hand, ready for split-second snapshots, and the Yashica-Mat hung around my neck for when I could afford to focus (literally). I'm less happy to report I fucked up this perfect pairing by dragging around my digital Olympus EM1 too, because I'm a coward. That, plus my iPhone, created an untenable square dance of options.
You can spot the obvious pitfall of too many cameras from a mile away: analysis paralysis. Ayrton Senna descends from heaven in a McLaren made of fire, and you miss the shot deciding which camera to use. I didn't have too much of an issue with that, (thanks Ayrton!) but the pitfall I didn't expect was regretting the shots I did get.
For instance, on the morning of race day, I was virtually on top of a crew running practice pitstops. I shot about a dozen photos with my digital camera, only thinking to grab my Yashica-Mat just as they finished up. I got great shots, both film and digital, but instead of walking away exhilarated, I spent that moment frustrated I'd used the "wrong" camera. What a stupid bummer!
That's not to mention the sheer logistical nightmare of having too much gear. I had a TLR around my neck, a bag with the EM1 around my shoulder, the XA2 in one pocket, and my phone in another. It made moving through crowds arduous and running the inventory of my belongings more annoying than it had to be.
Ultimately, having two film cameras was a real blessing: my XA2 hellaciously underexposed two of three rolls for reasons I've yet to diagnose. If that had been my only camera, I'd have been crushed.
Two non-phone cameras, for different and distinct purposes, seems like the real sweet spot to me. Which two? I don't know; you're talking to the guy who brought three.
Don't underprepare
Yes, you can do both of these at once. They're actually linked; I walked into Hard Rock Stadium with too much equipment because I didn't walk in with enough of a plan.
My default photography strategy has always been to lurch from shot to shot as they occur to me, chasing the breeze and maybe pulling a theme out of the raw material in the edit. But an F1 Grand Prix weekend demands a more thoughtful approach. If you walk in with a vague plan to take neat pictures of cool cars, you're in for an almost impossible challenge. Not only are the cars extremely fast, they're also usually far away and frequently occluded. Plus, you'll probably have trouble seeing them from more than a single, static vantage point. So it'll pay to come up with some clever ideas for what the hell it is you are doing, artistically, ahead of time.
I could only get results as good as I did because I attended the Miami GP as a guest of Aston Martin, which let me get closer to the cars for longer than the average grandstand attendee. I got to be uncommonly up close and personal with the Aston Martin V8 Vantage safety car (I even got a tragically awful photo from inside!) and a view into the back of the garage during a practice session, resulting in a few particularly nice photos that serve as the backbone of my series.
You can, of course, purchase varying degrees of access for various princely sums. A Paddock Club pass is essentially table stakes for seeing the cars close up, as it comes with the opportunity to walk down pit lane on race day before the main event. But even then, your view of the cars will be fleeting and obstructed. Whatever you ante up for tickets, it pays to decide what you're trying to photograph going in: cars, fans, track, pit crews or whatever else.
Given another bite at the apple, I still don't know what I would do. Maybe something with multiple exposures or out-there experimental. If I were a different sort of person and photographer, I'd consider opting for portraits and trying to collect a fan of every driver on the grid. At the very least, I'd think about it a bit harder.
Pick your priorities
I went to Miami with one particular shot in mind: the classic panning shot. Drop the shutter speed down to 1/100th or so and whip your camera with the cars as they speed by, squeezing off shots until you get lucky with one that catches its subject crystal clear, with the background blurred behind.
I got it, more or less. It's not perfect, but what is?
And while I'm proud of the technical accomplishment, I wish I hadn't spent so much energy and film trying to get it. Every Grand Prix has an army of professional photojournalists with less obstructed angles, better access, more specialized gear and more practiced trigger fingers shooting these shots and others like them. It's fun to have my own version, and I'm certainly pleased with it. But while I was expecting it to be my masterpiece, I can see now that it's more like a paint-by-number; the only unique thing about it is that I took it.
My favorite shots, by contrast, aren't pictures of the cars so much as pictures that happen to feature them. Little moments otherwise lost to history. A boy stares into the darkness of a garage. A marshal grabs a drink next to stacks of used tires. A fist pumps unexpectedly into an otherwise sterile shot of the race start.
If having a plan is deciding what dish to cook and putting together a grocery list, prioritization is closely examining your recipe. Which herbs are essential, and which are just garnish? Should you work on the veggies before everything else or while the roast is in the oven? You can't plan for every eventuality, but you can have a rough idea of what to cut, and where to spend bonus bandwidth.
Shoot your shot
Film flips the script on digital photography. Every frame is money out of your pocket, and you won't see the results for days, so you can't guess and check your way to success with a sea of 1,500 photos. Sometimes the winning move is not to take the shot.
At an F1 race (or any big event, really), these habits serve you poorly. The biggest waste is failing to shoot all the film you budgeted for the trip. I dragged some "special occasion" rolls of discontinued Fuji Pro 400H to Miami and back only to shove them back in the freezer, probably until a less special occasion.
When in doubt, take the shot. Just take the fucking shot! But if that sounds easier said than done, I recommend setting up some rules and sticking to them (within reason). Here are a few you can mix and match.
Give yourself deadlines. Decide to finish your first roll at noon or before you get to your seat. If it's 11:59 and you have 15 frames, don't waste them. But if you're on the first third of your roll and halfway to your deadline, you know to get trigger-happy.
Take every shot twice (or thrice). Not every opportunity lends itself to this approach, but your timing isn't perfect. Sometimes the shot you really want is the moment just before or just after the one you were trying to capture.
Devote a whole roll to high priorities. The classic panning shot is an obvious case here, but it's also good for maximizing the chance of getting a very fast car in a specific part of a composition.
Come up with non-negotiables. Pick some priorities to shoot every time you see them, like fans celebrating (or in dismay).
Alternate your ISOs. Slap in a roll of Ektar 100 to start (and finish) before a sunny qualifying ends if you're otherwise going with a higher-speed film.
Think twice before flying with film
The party line from the TSA is that its traditional X-ray scanners won't hurt film less than 800 ISO. Reasonable people can disagree. The safest bet is to politely ask a TSA agent for a 'hand check' of your unboxed rolls of film, clearly labeled in a plastic bag, as soon as possible. They'll swab each roll to confirm you aren't a quirky terrorist with a pocketful of celluloid-based firecrackers and you can be on your way.
That goes double now that the TSA is rolling out CT scanners in many airports, which are verifiably deadly to film of any speed. You can do some research beforehand if the airports at issue have installed them, but the telltale signs are that the scanners are big and bulbous, and you're told you can leave liquids and electronics in your carry-on. In this case, a hand check is essential.
I prepared contingency plans for both directions in case of a denied hand check. Departing from Newark, I would run my film back to the car and develop a different pitch. Departing from Miami, I would mail the exposed film home in a pre-paid padded envelope so I could bring it to my trusted local lab.
Luckily, my TSA agents were very accommodating and knew their scanners would thrash my film. But if you can avoid the whole rigamarole and stress, you should. Consider mailing your film if possible and maybe even develop it locally if you can. At the very least, you can mail exposed rolls out to The Darkroom before you leave.
Yes, it's scary and difficult and a fairly large pain in the ass. But then again, isn't that part of why we shoot film in the first place?
