After my 11th season as the official photographer for the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car series, I finally feel like my transformation from a NASCAR photographer shooting stock cars on oval tracks to a sports car photographer covering many of the great American road races is complete.

One of the definite differences between shooting oval tracks and road courses is the opportunities you get to incorporate more of the surrounding scenery in your photos. From the trees surrounding course like Watkins Glen and Virginia International Raceway to the low, misty clouds hanging over Lime Rock Park , and even the Montreal Skyline looming behind Canada’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, the scenery gives you more photographic options than the concrete jungle that is NASCAR.



Even the weather presents opportunities at a sports car race. When the rain starts to fall on a NACAR event, the cars are covered up and the drivers, fans, crews, officials and media retreat to dry quarters to watch the weather radar. On the Grand-AM side of the tracks, rain tires are bolted on ad the show goes on!



So while NASCAR holds the edge in crowd size and TV audience, the motorsports photographer looking to open up his imagination should pack his hiking boots and rain gear and head for the nearest road course.

Be sure to check out my new gallery on bcpix.com: Grand-Am scenics from the 2011 season.


BCPIX.COM houses the ever-growing online photo archive of Florida -based freelance photographer Brian Cleary, whose fledgling video catalog can be found at pond5.com, as well as a unique collection of stock video created from his still photo archive at bcpix.tradebit.com

As always, the Photoshelter platform at bcpix.com provides for easy, searchable browsing, purchase and download of all the images.

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