Sports photographer Max Earey has been a fulltime professional photographer for 3 years and spent the preceding seven years as, what he calls a 'semi-pro' building his stock and his experience.
He is an avid sports photographer but concentrates on adventure sports, yachting and motor sports. His favourite location are Ho'okipa beach in Maui, Hawai which he describes as having the 'purest light'. He seems to have done motorsports photography for many manufacturers and many magazines, and features in a monthly column on ukphotographics.co.uk magazine. This month he does a roundup of last year... "So how was 2002 and what were the highlights for me? Well by far the biggest and most significant development has been the growth in demand for digitally originated images; certainly the gradual improvements in resolution have been a contributing factor to this growth, but the greater factor in my experience; has been the clients increased abilities and willingness to process and use these images, there is still a way to go for most magazines..." "The D1x seemed to me; to excel in � angle slow shutter panning shots with fill in flash provided by the SB 28 DX unit. On the downside the D1x struggled with a slight but none the less noticeable shutter lag which was most evident when shooting 'head on' car shots which are much favoured by the magazines. Ironically this problem seemed to help with Formula One ensuring the driver was sharp where as with the BTCC 'tin tops' some of the pictures proved not to be up to the required standard and were duly discarded. " "As May drew to a close and the warmer days of June arrived. The Nikon had moved on, Canon were now firmly back in the digital ascendancy with the ultra fast 1D albeit with a slightly disappointing final file size and the D60 which soon found a home in the 'Earey' equipment bag" "July, August and September seemed to come and go at break neck speed, trips to the US and Canada proved successful. The British Grand Prix wasn't that eventful and Andy Rouse convinced me to invest in the Pentax 645 system. Ease of use, metering, optical performance and a cover from its first outing resulted in a re think to my assignment approach! ME> Well done ANDY!!! Was this the end of 35mm for me? Not entirely but on a trip to the famous Spa Franconchamps race circuit toward the latter part of September not one 35mm body came out of the bag! The weather was poor, very wet and very dark!! The subject; a Yellow Porsche 996 road/race car was handed over along with the promise of 35minutes of track time to ourselves in which to complete the 7 page feature! The Pentax made short work of shooting 3 rolls of front and rear static's, the car to car action was next, out came the digital; the time left would give us approximately 3 laps to get front, side and rear pictures. 15 minutes later the job was well under way and we had exhausted our time on the track, we headed back to the pit lane to complete the details and pass the car to the 'Pro' driver and then....................it all went wrong, the clutch blew up and play came to an end, c'est la vie.... We had enough stuff and hit the road home. October, more rain and a day at Donington Park with Team BMW Great Britain their E46 race car and driver Tom Coronel.... one of the most amenable Professional drivers I've met. It was a free practice day and the team were giving a handful of journalists a first hand experience of life in the passenger seat, I think I had the easy job that day and was later invited to the weekend's racing by one of the Team's main sponsor's. A couple of phone calls later and a magazine called Performance BMW had agreed to take a 3 to 4 page race feature and a suspension sponsor had confirmed their interest in buying an action shot for a series of advertisements. So all in all a successful and most enjoyable freelance day with more to come. November's motor sport highlight proved to be the Network Q Rally, not a rain drop in sight and enough sun to...............simply make it so much easier than last year! Many of the pictures have been used especially from Day 3 and as we move rapidly toward the 2003 season the requests keep coming" ME>ALL THIS WITH A 645N?!?!? "And finally to all things photographic, 35mm will have no place in my work, Canon's 1Ds will replace my D60, the Pentax will last the year but come under threat as more and more photographers present digital work to their Editors. Design and Repro output will match the quality of the input as is already visible with some of the 'Professional Photographic' magazines and finally cash flow should improve not having to buy 300 rolls of film per month!!! Roll on 2003" ME> And who says pros dont use Pentax, or our AF is not good enough for wildlife or motorsport!!! Andy Rouse and Max Earey seem to think the 645 is just fine!
