Access

I was watching this thread to see if it went unanswered before responding. I believe that you did the best that you could do. You asked. There is usually only so much room for the media photographers and it can be impractical to give everyone (including freelancers) access. Some events even require an event press pass over specific media ID and have to be gotten at a press meeting days before the event. You could ask for a press pass within an hour of the event. The pass holders are so busy that they just might let one out but you will be challenged with two seconds of time to make your case. If you are a freelancer or in non-media photography, have your business card in hand where it can be seen when you ask. That is one split second that might get an exchange for a pass. The busier the person is the better your chances. Don't go direct to the pass holder at first just before an event. Go to another official and ask who or where the passes are issued. Then when you ask, say such and such over there said that you were the person that handles press passes. Again, you got two seconds to make your case without more than a few words. If you were driving an airplane, I think they would call your move side slipping to make a turn.

 

Ummmm, yeah   That's how I got started "freelancing" and I probably did 9/10 in success. Much nicer now having a real magazine photo ID. When I do the two big Steeplechase events each year, I still carry an extra Press Pass and find a serious photographer in advance or from the crowd. I put them right by my side for the day. That includes shooting from the track during the races.

 

Friend of mine who shoots motorsport got picked up by the mags because of what he was shooting from the crowds. It was his creativity in getting shots that got him noticed and helped him go pro (in that field, he was already a pro equine shooter).

Even now he will still spend some time shooting from the crowd at events. It's one way he can still get shots that are different from all the other accredited photogs. If you think about it, if you've got 5 accredited guys all shooting from the same spot then, essentially, you can end up with 5 sets of (almost) the same shot.

So think about how you can be creative in getting images WITHOUT accreditation. In addition to trying to get clean shots of the cars racing, use some of the obstacles, e.g. make the catch-fencing the focal point with the cars blurred behind it; include pics of the crowd; etc, etc.

Just some thoughts.

Neil

 

This was in the UK and it was thirty five years ago so it probably won't apply to the US today but here goes.
I joined the club that organized most of the races at my local circuit (Castle Combe) got involved in marshaling and got to know the committee (I knew a few of them anyway) and they got to know I was interested in, and was capable of, taking motor racing pictures. It was easy then to talk them into giving me a circuit pass. I went to the circuit recently and things had changed a lot, whereas I had wandered round the infield and could take pictures from anywhere I chose the press are now herded into special enclosures. I spotted quite a few positions in the public enclosures giving better picture opportunities than the accredited press/magazine photographers.
For old times sake here is one I took back then on High Speed Extachrome pushed one stop from 160ASA to 320ASA using a 400mm f5.6 squeeze focus novaflex lens on a Nikon F.

So my advice - long term - join the club, do some voluntary work at race meetings, get to know people, show them your work and you never know.

 

Consistent with weird is that I got an email notification of your non-existent posts.

 

Patrick switched the server on which the Nikon Cafe is hosted today to gain speed...must have lost a few posts in the DB during the move.

C

 

Cory is correct. We were all very frustrated by the slow responses that we were getting from the old server (I think it was a quad Xeon with several GB of memory, but it was hosting about 100 web sites), so we upgraded to a server where we are only one of five sites.

So far, the response seems to be significantly better. We apologize if it caused any loss of posts, but we should all benefit in the long term.

Let's face it, the Cafe has grown much faster than we ever anticipated, and we are suffering growth pains. Not a bad problem to have actually, as long as we deal with it. 8)