David Ashdown's sports picture diary: Newmarket

This weekend David Ashdown was at Newmarket for the Dwehurst Stakes. Horses can be unpredictable creatures and this make's the life of a photographer all the more difficult.

Newmarket would not be my first choice of course for photographing racing. The course is very boring from a picture point of view; the finishing straight is almost a mile long and it rises as it gets to the finish line which is perfect for testing the ability of the horses, but from a photography point of view, it's not particularly helpful.

There is not much atmosphere to speak of either, there are no trees or nice backdrops to use and the main grandstand has too many bits sticking out all over the place that can make a picture look unattractive.

The two main races only make use of the finishing straight - it's like a cavalry charge. The main problem is that you can't be certain what side of the course the race will finish, or even worse, sometimes the race splits into two groups making it almost impossible to tell who is likely to win. You can find yourself in the ridiculous situation that as the horses get closer to the finish line you're needing to snatch a look at the TV screen to try and work out who might be leading and moving from one group of horses to the other. In the end it's like tossing a coin and taking your pick which group has the winner in it. Fortunately this was not the scenario on Saturday!

For the Dwehurst Stakes I decided to position myself on the grandstand side of the course as the starting gate appeared to be slightly towards that side - this was no guarantee that they would come up my side as it only takes one stumble to change their direction - but it was the best indicator I had.

This picture was taken on a Nikon D3 at 1/800 second and I was using a 500mm F4.0 lens with a 1.7 tele-converter making the focal length of the lens 850mm with an exposure of F6.7. By using the tele-converter the aperture of the lens is reduced by one and a half stops.

This picture was taken when the horses were still about a furlong away. It's made more dramatic as the rise to the finish line is more pronounced because of the focal length of the lens.

My punt worked this time but next time who knows - the horses might split into three groups - now that would be interesting. I just hope that I'm somewhere else on the day that happens.

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