Motorsport · with Overtake Agency
From Baku to Spa, seven Grand Prix weekends with Overtake Agency. Not a collection of beautiful images, but a demonstration of a method, in the most demanding environment we know.
The context
Formula 1 is the most demanding production environment there is: three days, around ten sessions, images that have to go out while the cars are still running. And a paddock where nobody waits for anybody.
Our role
Dan works in Formula 1 through Overtake Agency, an agency specialising in motorsport content and communications. Day is not commissioned by F1: Day brings its photographic expertise to a team that lives in this paddock.
What it proves
Recognition
Three images selected among the finalists of the latest edition, in the Formula 1 category. An international competition, judged by sports photographers and photo editors.
Next edition: entry submitted.
In the press
f1You don’t need to zoom in this place… 😮💨📸
Seen on Instagram
During the Monaco weekend, the @f1 account published this image of Dan at work, in a series on the paddock's photographers.
@f1View the accountOff track
Lewis Hamilton. A few seconds at most, a signed cap, and a video filmed on a phone to remember it by.
The method
A race weekend starts well before the cars leave the garage. You don't go to a circuit hoping to find good photos: you prepare the images you want to try to make.
The journey
It all starts in Baku, in September 2024. Since then, each season has added its circuits. The map flies over the circuits: each point opens its chapter.
The first Grand Prix. A street circuit squeezed between the old town and the Caspian Sea, two kilometres of straight and walls everywhere. You learn fast: where to stand, when to move, and above all when not to move.
The last race of the season, at Yas Marina. The session starts at sunset and ends under the floodlights: the light changes every ten minutes, and so do the settings. Between sessions, we sort, edit, deliver. Then we go again. And on Tuesday, we stay for the end-of-season test: the paddock empties, the light stays.
No run-off, no room to step back, no space. We shoot through fences, from balconies, on staircases, at pedestrian-crossing level. The slowest lap of the season, and the densest in images: every metre of street is a different set.
The fastest circuit on the calendar, in the middle of a park. Tifosi everywhere, from Friday morning to Sunday night. The challenge here: conveying speed, and fervour, in a still image. And when the race turns, being in parc fermé before anyone else.
Winter testing at Sakhir: three days of running, no race, no standings. A paddock discovering the new cars at the same time as we do, and drivers more available than elsewhere. The ideal moment to test our positions, our settings and our delivery chain before the season starts, from broad daylight to night panning shots.
The Red Bull Ring, in the mountains of Styria. A short lap, barely over a minute, leaving very little time between passes. Flowering meadows beside the track, a forest to hide in, and weather that can change everything in a quarter of an hour. The weekend Antonelli takes a home podium for Mercedes.
Spa-Francorchamps, the longest circuit on the calendar, in the Ardennes. The weekend starts with a run in memory of Anthoine Hubert, continues under a sky that changes every hour, and ends in Mercedes jubilation: Antonelli's first win, under the lenses of the whole world. The latest chapter, for now.
Behind the scenes
What the photos don't show: Monza's red tide, the Bahrain sun in the fence, the colleagues at Spa. Grab a photo, move it.
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Overtake Agency is an agency specialising in motorsport content and communications. Through Overtake, Dan works in Formula 1, alongside a team that lives this calendar all year round.
Day is the creative expertise and the production method. Overtake is the ecosystem in which that work takes place. Without one or the other, this page would not exist.
The CFC graduation ceremony, two editions covered in photo and video.
A project like this one?
30 minutes, no commitment. You tell us about your business, we tell you how we would look after its image.
