Of the thousands of motor racing photos I have taken over 50 years this is my absolute all time favourite .
I have put this photo on the blog previously but I have just rescanned the original Kodachrome 25 slide to utilise Lightroom 4 software to try and optimise it and this is very close to the original slide -on my monitor anyway. It was taken on an Olympus OM2 with an Olympus 28mm lens.
It was taken during the Saturday afternoon practice session at the 1981 Italian Grand Prix at Monza.It has it all -Monza- a fantastic,historic circuit with a unique atmosphere-that diffuse yellow light you get on a hot late summer afternoon in Northern Italy-wonderful cars being worked on in the pit lane in full view of everyone-not closeted away behind closed doors as happens now-a pit lane dolly in shorts-enthusiastic onlookers everywhere.And those great big slick donut tyres-no silly one-make control tyres in those days.And it is Italy.Wonderful.And perhaps above all else it has that wonderful film "look" is so appropriate for the time.
Those were the days. My first SLR was the OM 1 with a 50 f1.4 lens and an inexpensive 70 - 200mm Vivitar zoom. Kodachrome 25 is/was truly a wonderful film; and today the complain that an M9 with a respectable 1200 ISO isn't good enough.
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