Ben Spies at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway

May 16, 2023

By Daniel Lo

I took this photo from my “lazy spot”. At Indianapolis, there is a small outdoor balcony attached to the south end of the press room. As far as the shortest distance from my workstation to an outdoor spot that offered reasonably clear views of motorcycles on track, nothing came close to this. This was my go-to spot for the short Sunday morning warm-up sessions. But this was a Saturday afternoon and I simply didn’t feel like wandering far from the comforts of the media center, so I went out on the balcony instead. I proceeded to shoot a bunch of mistimed panning shots. This was one of them. The foreground was littered with distracting elements, and Ben Spies was well past the spot where I was actually aiming for. But what normally would end up being a throwaway frame actually turned out somewhat interesting, purely by accident. There’s probably a profound lesson here but I don’t know what it is.