Photos By Mario, an origins thread

[Mario Johnston]

Hey, friends.
Thought I'd give you guys a formal introduction after being in the boating community here in the US for just the last 3 years.
Some of you guys I've had the pleasure of meeting at ponds and events around Ohio and Indiana. My name is Mario, I'm a fairly new member of the Cincinnati Model Boat Club and a sports photographer of sorts.
I moved to the United States from Bermuda back in 06, and found the CMBC in spring of 2018. I spent much of the last decade photographing sporting events of all sorts around the midwest, however most of my focus has been on drifting, both on the pro-am and pro competitive levels. I've worked with numerous organizations to cover their events, as well as companies like Holley Performance and magazines such as Drift Life Magazine, Perfomance Auto & Sound, and our very own IMPBA RoosterTail Newsletter.

In addition to getting back into boating, since I got away from it as a kid, I'm hoping to bring you guys some cool images from club events and meets in the future. If you see images that you like or would like to have hi-res versions of, don't hesitate to reach out to me and I'd be happy to send you the full size files.
But for now, I'll show you some of my previous work at the track, some of which date back almost 10 years, as well as some of my favorites from our club lakes.
Thanks for looking, boys!

 

[Mario Johnston]

 

[Mario Johnston]

 

[Terry Keeley]

Awsome photos, welcome!

 

[Michael lipschutz]

Great photos

 

[Wasted wages]

Awesome picture!!!

 

[MarkScott]

This has been a backdrop on work/home laptops. Mario always gets the shots, well, almost!

 

[Ray Sametz]

Very cool, nice work. Welcome aboard.

 

[Brian Sorgente]

Very nice!

 

[Blair Warren]

Great Pics!!!

 

[don donikowski]

Good stuff! What camera and lenses are you using?

 

[Mario Johnston]

Good stuff! What camera and lenses are you using?

Thanks!
My earlier work was shot with a Nikon D300s, various lenses but mostly a Tamron 70-300 f4-5.6 Di VC USD

Last year I upgraded to a Nikon D500, my new go-to lens is my Tamron 100-400mm f4.5-6.3 Di VC USD

 

[Brandon Atwell]

Thanks!
My earlier work was shot with a Nikon D300s, various lenses but mostly a Tamron 70-300 f4-5.6 Di VC USD

Last year I upgraded to a Nikon D500, my new go-to lens is my Tamron 100-400mm f4.5-6.3 Di VC USD


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Big fan of those shots, never seen a tunnel look so fast! Lol
Been looking at getting myself a Nikon for some freelance work to do while in college/ working internships. I’m going to be taking a look at the D500, thanks for the sporting shots! Working sports production jobs at the moment so these really come in handy to judge the camera.

 

[Mario Johnston]

Thanks so much!
So the fun thing about shooting tunnel hulls is that overall, they're just a touch slower than something like a rigger. So I can pan, track and shoot with a slightly slower shutter speed which yields a way more blurred background. Something like 1/25-1/60sec

Shooting fast riggers is tricky, especially up around the 75-80mph range. I'm shooting a way faster shutter to catch some of the fast nitro and gas riggers in our club, up around 1/500sec

 

[Wasted wages]

Back in the mid 80's my wife and I were heavy into taking high speed shots and indoor and night time rock concerts... we used Nikon 35mm with two time convertors and 50-300 lenses.. we used 1500-4000 speed film.

We got some awesome stop action drag racing shots and concert action.
playing with f-stop settings and different film speeds took some time to learn.

we paid to have our pictures processed...never got into developing..

one thing I noticed about high speed digital pictures is, they don't truly seem stop action like film is... why is that ?
always seems to be some part of the picture that is blurred..

 

[Mario Johnston]

So I can certainly freeze the action in my shots more should I choose to. However with mine in particular, I shoot drifting cars a lot, so I choose to drop my shutter speeds down to around 1/60 or 1/80sec for lateral movement and only up to 1/125 or 1/250sec for vehicles coming toward me. This ensures that the wheels are always seen to be spinning and creating movement. I love being able to create the feeling of speed in this way.

With vehicles moving more laterally, I slow my shutter down significantly to not only create the feeling of speed and direction, but to also blur out distracting elements in my backgrounds, especially at the track where there are huge billboards or fences. The blur in my action shots is entirely controlled and intentional, the subject is usually tack sharp.

The new digital cameras are still fully capable of ramping the shutter speed up to around 1/8000sec however, I rarely find this useful. You can certainly stop any object dead in its tracks but the shots, for me, don't feel quite as interesting.
This was an example I put together for some of my fellow media people a while back. Both images were shot at the exact same spot on track, within a few minutes of each other.

Too fast of a shutter and your subject is frozen, appears to be sitting still in frame.

Slow shutter to create blur laterally, speed up much more to freeze in corners

 

[Wasted wages]

Mario, Allan posted this picture in another thread, I thought it was awesome. when you think in terms of the speed of the prop, there is a lot going on in that split second.
I don't know who took the shot, if it was luck or they were trying for it, but it had to be a very high speed setting.

Have you ever tried to get some close up water surface shots like this one ? I bet some really good pics of boats like this example could go a long way in helping people figure out different problems and prove or disprove a lot of "theory's" ..... maybe even settle a few arguments...or start some..

 

[gilbert galli]

shoot of my old deltaforce sniper 44 with CMB 91rs

 

[Mario Johnston]

You're not wrong! Close up analytical shots can definitely help prove, or disprove many theories about our boats' hydrodynamic performance.
We've had numerous conversations at our lake after I've taken photos over sponson angle, hull flex, propeller cavitation, etc all while looking at the photos to find more speed. This is one of such photos that details the differing sponson flex angle under load.

I've taken photos that have told a lot of secrets about rear sponson angle, but some of the close ups I don't post to keep some of the boaters speed secrets just that; a secret!

 

[Lay26]

Cincy club lucky to have you bro