I've been a car nut all my life. Even though I'm nowadays more into mountainbikes and do no longer read any other motoring magazine aside from Autosport, I still enjoy motor cars, both racing and regular. I like the design part in it, I like the technology, I like the sound of a high revving engine. To be honest I quite enjoy everyday driving to the grocery store and back - even in a family saloon.

Racing cars are the ultimate in motoring. From the gutsy blutter of a WRC to the ear screeching scream of a Formula one car, it's music. To me the exhaust is a more enjoyable instrument than let's say an accordeon or a fiddle. The extremity of a racing car on its limit, tyres screaming for grip, suspension bouncing under the vigorous forces of cornering, acceleration and braking, loads of opposite lock and some to the other direction too... The whole experience of it is pure adrenaline.

The thing about photographing motor racing is in all of the above. The speed, the extremity, the tech. Capturing it on a single frame of slide film provides an immense challenge. Shooting racecars has taught me to shoot everything that is in motion; I haven't yet faced a faster moving subject than an F1 car. Shooting freeride mountainbiking gives me the chance to brush up my skills in action photography every weekend.

Motor racing and freeriding aren't of course identical in terms of photography. In bike shoots I usually get along with my 28mm lens or the 28-105mm zoom and a flash. Motor racing photography is all about long telephoto lenses. A 200mm is pretty much the minimum, and for head on shots over twice or trice that focal lenght. So equipment wise we're talking about two totally different fields. In bike shots - dirt jumping in particular - there's also loads of shooting subjects against the sky. That calls for fill flash, a tehchnique used quite little in motor racing. In pitlane shots the use of flash and shorter lenses of course comes in handy.

Photography combines the technology and speed of motor racing, music and mountainbiking. Speed, technology, good looking gear, and freedom of the individual. The camera, the bike or the racing car is an instrument that helps to create. A good camera does not do the job if you're not up to it. Neither does a top racing car, a '69 Stratocaster or an Intense M1. Gear is there to help, to reduce limitations of one's creativeness. But in every sport, money is an issue. What we do with less can be done with more and vice versa. We do it with what we got, because we like it. But it does not mean that I don't dream about an EOS1 and a 300 L 2.8 USM IS..

Check my freeride mountainbiking gallery at my homepage.