There is another reason race photography is especially interesting and enjoyable for me: it reveals racer faces. The result is what I like to call race, or action, portraiture. For me, it is one of the main attractions of taking so many frames (maybe 100,000 in recent seasons) in race arenas. The racing careers of junior racers are short, but it is an intense activity that will affect them for life, and one goal for me is memorializing those short careers by creating images of the highest quality. Although it takes some skill and a certain level of gear to translate what happens on course into images that reveal something of what racers feel as they strive for satisfaction, it also takes a lot of luck, and many race photos reveal nothing more than impassive effort. 

There is nothing magic about taking these sorts of pictures.  It takes effort and luck.  And not everyone wants to see race faces.  The juniors themselves would, I suspect, much rather see perfect form, stacked skeletal structure, without divergence, a sense of speed, and both boots and skis, and without a spray of snow implying anything less than a perfect carved turn, than a closely cropped image of a face.  

It sounds pompous, not to mention oxymoronic, to call this "race portraiture." We obviously aren't talking about portraiture in the sense of Avedon or Karsh or Irving Penn or Dorothea Lange. My subjects are certainly not "sitting" for their likenesses.  

Some of these images have been cropped, but a few were simply shot very tightly with a long lens.

Determination begins early. A Brian Russell Memorial race competitor, in costume:

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And a young FIS racer with a very high block scoots through a flush.

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There is still time to smile.

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This was shot very tightly. She is focused on the finish line, one gate ahead. 
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