Gallery

I've photographed the American Motorcyclist's Association Superbike Races at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course several times for the net's leading superbike racing site, SuperbikePlanet.com. Mid-Ohio is one of the most beautiful and photogenic road courses in the country, and the AMA Superbike Championship is one of the most competitive racing series in the world. Featured on this page are some of my personal favorite shots.

You can see my shots on the SuperbikePlanet web page at these links:
Page 1 - Page 2 - Page 3 - Page 4 - Page 5 - Page 6
but they are of slightly poorer quality than the ones here, simply because the rush to get photos out fast for timely news coverage means I don't get to prepare the images as carefully as I'd like.

2001

2001 was my first time photographing the Superbike races and my first serious effort at motorsports photography. It was also back in the (waning) days of film photography! After shooting all weekend, I raced back to Rochester, NY, where I was living at the time, and dropped off a dozen rolls of slide film for rush processing. Then I started loading batches of slides into my slide scanner and prepping the resulting files as quickly as I could to send out. I think SuperbikePlanet.com (which was then going under the name "amasuperbike.com") got them on line by Tuesday! The images shown here ought to look a little nicer than the ones still archived by SuperbikePlanet, only because I was able to take a lot more time fine-tuning them in Photoshop.

Click on any of the thumbnail images below to see a larger version

2004

This was my first year of shooting digital and another huge learning experience. I was shooting JPEG's because I still thought Raw conversion was too time-consuming. I know better now, but it was still a good education for me. I also had more high-quality lenses to choose from and a better idea of good shooting loations around the track. By this time, Mid-Ohio had installed high-speed Internet connections in the media facilities so I was able to send images out immediately after taking the shots. Ain't technology wonderful?

2005

Back again, another year older and wiser. I had a pretty good handle on good shooting spots (though always looking for something new) and gots lots of tips and help from the corner workers (several of whom I knew from my own roadracing years earlier). "Watch this Ben Spies kid", they told me, "He's the real deal". In 2006 he won the championship. It was a blazingly hot and humid weekend; in many of the photos you can see the haze in the air. Tough conditions for racing.

People Shots — Various Years

Some shots of the "cast of characters" that is the AMA Superbike championship series.