Subject or photographer - which is the problem?

[G_Ilott]

Here's a topic to make your blood boil with anger....

I've spent the last couple of months looking on the web in vain for interesting (pro) motorsport photos to give me some inspiration. All I find are thousands of extremely similar side-on and three-quarter shots, with a few mangy wide-angles showing nothing in particular and even fewer, rather desultory, blurred shots.

Coming from practising nature photography over the past few years, it's a bit disappointing to see so little creativity in such an exciting branch of this artform. Look at any pro landscape photographer's website then look at any pro motorsport photographer's website and you're left feeling cheated. Where is the differential focus or the black and white shots with red filters, or ND Grads, second curtain sync flash (where possible) and reportage?

So the question before us is : are motorsport photographers merely doing all they can with a difficult subject, or can it be said that if the same shots sell, why change the format?

If anyone has links to very creative motorsport photography, I would really like to see them. Of course, I'm not pretending that I'm some uber-god of silvery shennanigans, and, looking at my nature shots, I'm really still at the amateur stage. But I don't understand why the wealth of individual styles so apparent in other branches should not apply to motorsport.

Is this sport so specialised in its marketing that only clear, sharp pictures will sell and therefore there is little incentive to experiment? Obviously a pretty picture of a flower has many hundreds of potential markets in which to be sold, whereas shots of racing cars (and bikes etc!) only seem to be sold within the sport or subsidiary trades.

I'm not saying the side and 3/4 shots are bad - in fact, they are superbly sharp and dynamic, but one can have too much of a good thing.

I look forward to taking your abuse....