Newcastle Herald photographer Max Mason-Hubers writes for the Herald's new Daily Capture email series. Sign up to receive the Daily Capture direct to your inbox.
MOTORPSORT is difficult to shoot well. The raw speed of a V8 Supercar is difficult to translate into a still image. Perfectly-crisp frozen moments often fail to capture the energy and movement of the race.
When you're covering a major event like this, where there are a lot of very good photographers on the ground, everyone is trying to go one better - to make something unique and something awesome. We're all keeping our cards close to our chest when we find a good spot to shoot from, and we're all seeing different things.
Shooting motorsports is not like shooting any other sport. It's challenging because you don't have those special moments happening all the time - like a try, or a catch, or a field goal.
It's very difficult to capture those moments in motorsports - like an overtake or a crash. It takes an entire team of career broadcast professionals to tell the story of a race.
On assignment with Max Mason-Hubers: 100 photos in the Newcastle Herald in 2019
For us, as outsiders who don't normally cover motorsports, logistically, it is almost impossible. We don't have the same access to the pits and drivers as the official Supercars photographers. It's very time-consuming to change positions.
Each of the Herald photographers carry a kit weighing around 10 kilograms. If I put a 400mm lens on top of that it's about another four kilograms. One of our team members walked 17 kilometres on Sunday alone.
So, a bit of prior knowledge goes a long way with a sport like this - knowing where I need to be at a particular point of the race.
Many of the photos that you saw of the Supercars last weekend were very deliberate shots.
I knew that at turn one on Watt Street, at the start of the race, everyone was going to be jostling for a position. Things could get a bit hectic there. At turn six, at Newcastle Beach, the drivers come flying down that hill, hit the ripple strip at the apex of the corner and get two wheels in the air. Sometimes they just lose too much grip and end up in the wall.
But there is only so many places where I could get from the inside of the track to the outside, and only a limited time during the race to do it.
Knowing these logistical challenges has an effect on what I'm looking for at each location.
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Shooting McLaughlin as he rounded turn one on Sunday, I knew I wanted to capture that sense of movement and drama - to try to layer that speed into a picture.
I slowed the shutter speed down intentionally to blur the surroundings. As McLaughlin hit the corner, I started shooting a burst of pictures using a wide angle lens.
When I shoot a photo like this I'm usually pivoting my whole body along with the camera, turning at the hips, keeping the camera as steady as possible and keeping the car in the same place in the viewfinder. But with this photo, I had to push the lens through the wire in the fence separating the track from the spectators, so I could only pivot the camera in a short arc to capture the image I wanted.
I used a very small aperture and ISO setting to achieve a shutter speed that would create a strong blur but I had to make sure the shutter speed would still retain enough detail so you could still recognise the location just opposite Customs House on Watt Street.
With a photo like this, I'll typically take a few shots of other cars as they come past. I'll take four or five practice runs before I know I can nail it.
But we're press photographers, we're not only there to capture the race as a sport. Our assignment is to document the race in the context of our city.
After every attempt, I'll scroll back through to make sure the car is crisp, and the blur is right. The second I'm happy with it, I'm back on the hunt for the next picture.
Time's short, there's news happening, and I'm on deadline.
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