So you want to be a motorsports photographer... Wet Watkins

One word to describe Watkins Glen, 2015 Edition, is wet. It rained, it poured and it soaked the track to the point of causing red flags. Watkins Glen this year creates another case study in the "So you want to be a motorsports photographer" file. Watkins Glen is an awesome track for photography and is in an exceptional location. However with heavy rains it soaks everything, the paths inside the track get muddy and shooting track side quickly soaks everything.

Fellow photographers Jake Galstad, Foster Peters and myself headed out to New York for another action packed weekend in the glamorous world of motorsports photography! Weekend started out with Lamborghini, GT3 Cup and Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge taking to the track. Cloudy but good temps with random sunshine sneaking into the Finger Lakes region of New York. Had a good Thursday at the track with some great images captured. Things were looking up to escape from what has been rain the last couple of events. I ended the day, with the help of Jake(Thanks, Jake!), a group photoshoot with Mitchum Motorsports and their beautiful Lamborghinis. www.mitchum.ms

Friday things started to change with light rain starting. We did get our first races into the book and Lamborghini Super Trofeo Series did not disappoint. Qualifying for CTSC went off without a hitch as well. Overall a solid day with not too much excitement. Best shot of the day had to be the race start with a little bit of sun trying to burn through the clouds. Not much else to say about Friday.

Saturday the fun begins. A LARGE storm is slated to arrive minutes before the start of the Continental Tire race. I am glad that I decided to pull the trigger on a new Aquatech rain jacket. It's awesome by the way. Definitely check them out for professional level gear - https://aquatech.net/

Great start shot from the ST field(See lead photo) and continued to what was an excellent race. Weather is the great equalizer of course but shooting in what became a downpour was not fun at all. The conditions were only worse as we climbed to the roof of the front straight grand stands to shoot pit stops. Yes it is much more windy up there which leads to further problems. Temps are colder and water is blown onto the front of your lenses. However the view of pit stops is excellent and the group of photographers continue to work. Right about now the inside of the media center was sounding pretty good!

Mazda went on to win and we moved onto the Six Hours of The Glen. The big showed was gridded by points as qualifying on Saturday was "Rained Out". Wish they would have qualifying knowing it was going to be a wet race but it was chosen to start on points. It just started to drizzle as the formation laps were happening so everyone deployed their rain gear and waiting for the action!

This race was WET. I went through 3 pairs of socks total. I did pack extras judging by the weather report so I was prepared. It simply is one of those less than glamorous days working. Lots of action up and down the field as conditions were constantly changing from rain to drizzle to pouring and everything in between. Two different red flags happened and the race finished under caution which was unfortunate. In the end it was another fun weekend with colleagues and friends and I move onto ChampTruck at Charlotte Motor Speedway and then Jake and I head north for a visit to Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.