Drifting Photos from Drift Day 26 in Wisconsin

Posted by pikesan on May 20, 2009 in Art & Photography, Racing | 2 comments

Drift Day 26 Story and Photos by Daniel Lo over at Corner Speed Photo Thanks Dan!

This past Sunday marked my first time shooting 4 wheels for me. My first love is the 2 wheeled variety over at Corner Speed Photo. Thanks to some professional guidance, I think it worked out!

Held at USA International Raceway in Shawano, WI, “Drift Day 26” featured big names from the Midwest drift scene with the likes of Simba Nyemba of GripGambler and Mike Pollard of TMF Opposition in attendance. All this was made possible by my friend and pro shooter Danny Lim who was covering the event for Wrecked Magazine and was kind enough to invite an amateur to tag along. Check out his coverage of Formula Drift at Long Beach this year.

Having had fairly minimal exposure to the sport of drifting beyond watching The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and the odd YouTube clip, it took me a while to understand what exactly I was supposed to be shooting. Fortunately, Danny was on hand to coach me thru the basics so I had a bit of a jumpstart on the day.

Shooting a drift event was in a lot of ways the total opposite of what I’m used to. When you’re panning it means the front of the car is pointing towards you and when it’s coming or going, you see the car’s profile. Unlike shooting motorcycles, or possibly most other forms of motorsports, wheel spin is pretty much always visible so you can never quite get away with cranking up the shutter speed without losing sense of motion.

However, the real fun started towards the end of the day when I was able to put the camera down, throw on a helmet, and hop into Simba’s purple 240sx for a ride. Say what you will about drifting, but there’s no denying the ridiculous amount of precision and skill that must be required in navigating a car sideways around a track and experiencing it firsthand was nothing short of mind-blowing. Thanks again Simba!
(no that’s not me in the passenger seat)
When it comes to racing, my first love will always be 2 wheels so I probably won’t drop shooting motorcycle racing in favor of drifting anytime soon, but would I do this again? Definitely!

Click here for some more pictures from Drift Day 26

(Give Dan a shout and tell him to shoot more cars! – Pikesan)

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