Shooting the 24 Hours of Le Mans sounds thrilling until you realize you're standing inches from cars doing 200 mph for 40 hours straight. The gear choices, accreditation requirements, and shooting approach at an event like this are genuinely different from anything else in motorsport photography.
Coming to you from Samuel Bassett of OpticalWander, this immersive video follows an overnight shoot at Le Mans, covering everything from the formation lap through sunrise pit stops. Bassett was there working with Genesis UK for the brand's first 24-hour Le Mans entry, creating a full image set covering the cars, the team, the pit lane, and the crowd. He shot with three lenses: the Sigma 16-28mm f/2.8, the Sony 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3, and the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8, which he calls his most-used lens of the event. He also mentions the Sony 50-150mm f/2 as arguably one of the best motorsport lenses available, but points out the Tamron covers a wider range at a lower price.
One of the more practical parts of the video is the breakdown of how trackside accreditation actually works. To shoot at a circuit like Le Mans, you need two things: proof of professional competence, typically a portfolio or prior published work, and public liability insurance. The insurance threshold varies by track, but he puts the typical range at £5 million to £10 million in coverage. His advice is straightforward: contact the accrediting body directly, ask what the minimum requirement is, and go to £10 million if you're shooting multiple events per year so you're not scrambling each time. Getting that wrong doesn't just cost you a shot. It costs you your trackside pass entirely.
The video also gets into how he structured the 40-hour event around the 24-hour race itself. During downtime before the race started, he covered the team, the stands, and the brand activation content Genesis needed. Once the race was live, he focused almost entirely on track work: panning shots, detail shots of things like Michelin tire texture up close, and long exposures during pit stops and full course yellow periods when cars slowed enough to make slower shutter speeds practical. That last point is worth paying attention to. A full course yellow isn't a problem at Le Mans. It's an opportunity to get motion blur shots that are nearly impossible when cars are running flat out. He walked through specific settings at different points in the shoot, including a 0.8-second exposure during a Genesis pit stop that he was clearly happy with. There's more in the video on how he planned his shot list and built a cohesive image set that told the full story of the event rather than just delivering a pile of panning shots. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Bassett.
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