The great thing about Laguna Seca, besides how fun it is to drive on, is how much fun it is to shoot. Especially for the intrepid folks who put in the legwork and deal with some pretty significant hills to march up and down. A full day of shooting is quite fruitful for different angles, corners, up-close vs. spread out (especially with a good zoom lens), and so forth.
- Car(s): NC Mazda Miatas, fifth-gen Ford Mustangs
- Location: Laguna Seca, Monterey, CA
- Photog: Peter Nelson (IG + Twitter: @16vPete)
- Camera: Canon 6D Mk2, Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM Lens
The best spot is the Corkscrew. Yes, everyone knows the Corkscrew for its wild elevation change behind the wheel, but this also gives a good selection of vantage points for photos. Thoroughly documenting this corner isn’t very hard. What’s more: getting a variety of different cars coming through this corner at once is very possible as well.
The cars in this photo aren’t tremendously different; they’re both front-engine, RWD sports cars, just of difference sizes and cylinder counts. But club racing classing-wise they’re quite different. I took this photo during an SCCA race back in 2019, during a qualifying session. This is when cars go out and set the fastest lap they can, which then determines where they’ll be starting for their race that day.
I’m sure these cars had no problem being on track together, as in they didn’t impede each other’s ability to set the lowest-possible laptime. But man did they, and a bunch of other cars on track, make for some cool subject matter inside of even cooler subject matter: the corner itself.
Here’s the full 1080p photo:
