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The photographer: Graeme Brown

“My father had a friend who owned an Opel dealership, and they sponsored a rally team. I remember from the age of five or six, I have photographs of me sitting in the rally car. That’s where my passion for motorsport came from”, explains Graeme Brown. His interest in photography arrived later, developed as a teenager and “weekend warrior”, working at both racetracks and rallies. From there he moved on to his first steps as a professional, working amongst others for Castrol Honda UK who introduced him to the WorldSBK championship – a competition he has now followed full-time since 2001. While he established a working relationship with the teams linked to the gold winged brand, Brown has also worked for other manufacturers, including Yamaha and Kawasaki. “Every job has its highs and its lows, there are days when you don’t particularly enjoy your job, but you have to remember that you travel the world taking photographs of motorbike racing. There can’t be many jobs that are better than this!”.

The photo: Friday, Monza Parabolica, zenithal angle

“The picture I’d like to highlight was taken at the Monza Parabolica. It’s from the year 2000 and you’re seeing Aaron Slight, who was running for Castrol Honda. There’s a platform above the track, it’s completely unique, there’s nowhere else, at any other circuit, where you can look directly down on the bikes as they literally come underneath you. I like the picture just because of the location and the position, but also, the sunshine creates a really strong shadow. Early morning on a Friday, first practice, you get a really strong shadow on the track. Every time that the WorldSBK championship raced at Monza on a Friday morning I would go and recreate this picture with the new group of riders. If you look through my archive every year, you will find the same picture up until 2013, the last time we raced there. “In later years they painted the curbs red, white and green, so that you have the Italian tricolor telling you you’re in Italy, at Monza. As I say, it’s unique, there’s nowhere else you can get a picture like this. There are tracks where you go and make the same pictures every year you go, every weekend. But this one was always first on the agenda, when I get to Monza. Friday morning, I knew exactly where I was going to go and what I was going to do”.