Standing precariously on the wrong side of the tracks, you’ll find the photographers paid to capture the fastest cars on the planet.
Stranded between fences, behind knee-high safety barriers, and sometimes even up trees, they are poised as Formula One’s racers peel out of corners at 125 mph and speed along straights at 200 mph.
In front of them the engines thunder, while behind them the crowd roars — amid these juddering sensations, the “snappers” must keep a steady hand on their trigger, poised to capture F1’s slick machines in the split second they hurtle past.
“Taking pictures is a lot like learning to drive a car,” Mark Thompson, who travels the globe as a photographer for leading agency Getty Images, tells CNN.
“The drivers are thinking about keeping the thing on the road and getting the fastest lap while we are constantly watching the track and thinking about what we’re doing; the image exposure, the composition, the changing light and weather conditions.
“You’re looking for beautiful light, an interesting background, smoking tires, or something a little bit different than a car sitting on the track. It becomes second nature.”
Thompson explains all this from the edge of the Silverstone circuit, where the cars are hitting their groove in practice for the British Grand Prix.
As he talks, he manually alters the focus of his lens with his left hand and takes two or three frames with his right hand each time a car rounds Luffield corner for a fleeting view. The photographs are sent back to a photo editor via a transmitter in the camera.
“You pre-focus on the point where you want to take the picture and wait for the cars,” the Englishman explains. “Just before the car comes into that area you focus and, when the front of the car is sharp, you take a picture — this usually keeps the helmet in focus.
“The key is to keep the driver’s helmet sharp. Whenever you take a photograph of anyone, the focus is normally the eyes and it’s the same with the driver even though they’re in the car and wearing a helmet.
“If the car has no movement in the tires, it just looks like it’s parked on the circuit. The writing on the wheels has to be blurred.
“It’s critically important you show the car is moving by selecting the right shutter speed. When the car is side on you can also choose to go really slow and lose the background, so all the colors of the crowd are swooshing.”
Quickly switching focus, Thompson adds: “These are qualifying simulation laps now. We’ll see some dirt being kicked up now so let’s move on. We don’t want to do the same shot…”
Thompson swings his three cameras back over his shoulders and says hello to the volunteer race marshals, the other fearless folk who operate beyond the safety of the fence.
He squeezes along a narrow ledge and back inside the track limits to stand at the entrance of Luffield. The cars dance through the wide, open curve in front of the camera, thrillingly closer than before.
Does he ever consider the dangers of standing trackside — wearing a high-visibility vest to alert the drivers to his presence, with one eye through a lens — as racing cars are being pushed to their absolute limits?
“Sometimes when you see a car lose it and you realize how close they are,” the 51-year-old replies calmly.
“You’ve got to keep your eye on the cars and watch what you’re doing. I’ve had cars come towards me and wheels bounce over my head.
“Michael (Schumacher) crashed at Hockenheim once and went into the gravel trap. A stone came through the fencing and hit me in the head.” He points to a scar in the center of his forehead.
“The next thing I knew the marshals were pulling me to one side because I was bleeding,” he continues. “I didn’t know at the time because I was busy taking photos of Michael getting out of the car.”
Thompson is in his 19th season working for Getty Images as a full-time F1 photographer. He remembers his first working weekend at the 1993 European Grand Prix, a race brilliantly won by Ayrton Senna at a rainy Donington Park.
“I watched it more than I photographed it,” Thompson recalls. “I thought, ‘Wow, this is incredible.’
“You have to have ability in this job but there’s also a high percentage of luck, especially when it comes to taking news pictures.
“If a photographer gets a great crash picture they wouldn’t know it was going to happen. But sometimes people are standing there and they get lucky.”
Thompson works with two other Getty photographers every race weekend as well as a picture editor, and there is an established routine for race day.
“We get to the track around 9 a.m. and have a strategy meeting to decide the shot list,” he explains.
“The first thing to shoot is the drivers’ parade. We’re also looking out for celebrities. We’re not paparazzi photographers but if someone mega turns up, like Mick Jagger, there’s a real buzz.
“Then you prepare for the race. We check the weather forecast because if it rains you’ve got to pack a waterproof kit for you and the camera.
“I’d then take photographs of whoever is in pole position getting into the car in front of the garage.
“Lewis Hamilton comes into the garage with his helmet on. It’s hard to get a photo of him without his helmet on.
“Newspapers and websites don’t just want to see Hamilton driving a car they want to see his face and his expressions but he’s not that visible.”
Read: Hamilton ‘can challenge Schumacher’s record’
From snapping the pole sitter, Thompson moves on to the melee of the starting grid which he describes as “crazy.”
“I like to see the drivers just before they get in the cars. After the national anthem is played you can see in their expressions that they just switch off and focus on the race. Their heads go down,” he says.
“Damon Hill (the 1996 world champion) was always good to photograph. He had those eyes with a thousand-yard stare.”
After the grid, the photographers sprint to the first corner, lugging all their kit.
“There is a small scaffolding tower set up at the end of the first corner and we position ourselves there for the parade lap, the shot of the grid all lined up and then the lights go out and it’s action!” Thompson says.
“The one time you would use a really high shutter-speed is on the first two laps of the race, just in case something happens.
“At Spa, a few years ago, there was that huge crash involving Fernando Alonso, Romain Grosjean and Hamilton.
“That’s probably my biggest ever crash picture — it’s just incredible when you look at it, and you see the amount of carbon fiber that’s shattered in the air. That was shot at a very high shutter-speed.”
If there are no such early incidents, Thompson will head back to the pits to cover the teams’ stops.
“Races have been won and lost in the pits this season so if the world champion Hamilton comes in and loses a wheel or has front-wing damage, that’s a big picture to get, because that’s a news story,” he says.
“Then I’d try and do a shot of the winning car taking the checkered flag, and from there it’s on to the podium.
“Throughout F1 history, we’ve seen the same drivers on the podium during the season so you get to know how the drivers will react.
“You are looking for emotion but it can be difficult with certain drivers. If Kimi Raikkonen wins, for example, we know he’s not going to go mad. Hamilton is pretty good, he’s always happy to win.
“Schumacher was always very good. Every time he won he jumped on the podium. He just loved winning, every victory to him was like the first win, it really was. But there are not many drivers now who are like that.”
Thompson’s editor will choose the top five or six podium shots and send them to websites and newspapers. Any photos of race action are sent during the grand prix itself.
The photographers’ last job is capturing “something a bit different” from the team celebrations.
“When Hamilton won in Britain in 2014, he climbed on the fence in front of all the fans, which was a nice photo, but I was fighting with 60 other photographers to get the picture,” Thompson recalls.
“You do sometimes get in a bun fight with the other photographers. I’ve broken flashes and lenses, people have fallen over. It can be chaos.”
The serene surroundings of the Monaco Grand Prix is Thompson’s favorite spot to capture the sublime sight of cars snaking round a circuit at high speed.
“Where else can I look down on a car that’s underneath me with trees and the sea for a backdrop?” says Thompson, who is also the official photographer for the Red Bull Racing team.
“There’s so much variety there and it’s so cool. I shot one of Nico Rosberg this season from the rooftop of one of the buildings just before the first corner.
“He was coming into the corner and locked up, sparks were coming out of the back of the car.
“Rosberg tweeted the photo, saying ‘Thommo you legend,’ which was nice. It’s my favorite photo at the moment too.”
Former Monaco race winner Mark Webber once said when he was driving around the tight circuit he used to pick out Thompson from the side of the track on every lap.
“I actually recognized some of the photographers, like Thommo, standing inside the barriers,” Webber told CNN. “They’re doing their work and you’re doing your work but you see the odd flash of them which you don’t on other tracks.”
The amiable and amusing Thompson is one of F1’s most recognizable faces to those within the sport’s peripatetic community.
“I’m part of the furniture,” says Thompson, who is so popular with Red Bull that he was chosen as the private wedding photographer for team principal Christian Horner’s marriage to former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell.
“Winning the Honda karaoke competition three years in a row at the Japanese Grand Prix was a major breakthrough for me,” he jokes.
“I’ve been around a long time. The drivers trust me when they come into the sport. I still love what I do. You’ll probably find me picked up from the side of the track one day, carted off and singing an Elvis song.”
Until then Thompson will be climbing trees, knocking on apartment doors in Monte Carlo for a room with a view, or squeezing through fences to capture the fleeting thrill of an F1 car at full throttle.
