 |
Like a
lot of people I enjoy watching the Grand Prix. By coincidence one of my favorite
pictures is by the turn of the century french photographer Jacques-henri
Lartigue.
He took this
picture while he was still quite young. It is one in a series of a 169 shots
taken at the Grand Prix de I'A.C.F. using the comparatively large Ica reflex
camera with Zeiss 1:4.5 150mm lens onto a 3 1/2" x 4 1/4" glass
negative it had a top mounted focusing screen and a focal plan shutter, it is
this set up that accounts for the elliptical shape of the wheel. For me it is
the feature that conveys the excessive speed the car is travelling more than
his panning of this heavy camera to emphasize the rate of progress.. Originally
he thought this picture was a failure because he had not been able to capture
the whole car in the frame. This is the other part of the composition that adds
to the sense of great speed. It is one picture I do not get tired of looking
at, I always wonder what it would have been like to stand there as these early
cars thundered by.
