A lot of my assignments are very civilized and require me to go take a photo of a business owner in an office or a photo of an artist in their home. This was not one of those assignments.
In fact, this one didn’t even have me out on a sports field watching as athletes risk injury to themselves for whatever game their playing. Nope, this assignment went like this:
“So what I’m going to do is put you somewhere on the track and drive a car really fast toward you and try to miss you.”
My response was, of course, “okay.”
A few weeks ago I went out to Harris Hill Road Race Track in San Marcos to photograph owner Bo Rivers for the Statesman. Rivers is the one who said that quote above. He teaches a driving course for teens that goes above and beyond typical drivers’ ed.
Rivers showed me the course and let me shoot as he demonstrated the correct way to maneuver a car around obstacles at high speeds…
…how to recover from running off the road…
…and how to handle the car if the road is wet. (Though he had to simulate this one because drought conditions didn’t allow us to wet down the road for photos.)
Then we took a couple portrait shots. There’s one at the top and here’s another one…
And then he did something crazy! He put me behind the wheel. I went through all of the exercises and did pretty well, I think. …But we don’t need pictures of that.
Click here to read the Statesman’s story.