Photo Essay: 12 Shots from MotoGP in Austin

The large swatches of red, white, and blue paint at the Circuit of the Americas are a great visual addition to an already fairly scenic track.

Throw in a bit of elevation change, and the colors provide endless possibilities waiting to be explored.

With smooth armco and solid stripes serving as a background, a motion blur was easy to achieve. This came with a caveat, as this particular composition was also only possible with the fastest riders.

The reason for this is that the armco abruptly cuts off mid-corner, followed immediately by unsightly plastic crash barriers that required a substantially slower shutter speed to smooth out.

Slower riders didn’t get their bikes down at full lean until they were past the armco, which yielded very different results.

I tend to gravitate towards abstract compositions that intentionally obscure the location on the track. Any educated guesses as to Dani Pedrosa’s whereabouts?

Taking large swigs of water has been proven to be an effective and reliable method for MotoGP riders to ignore each other.

Despite his competitive pace, Cal Crutchlow once again leaves a race weekend empty-handed.

Loris Baz crashed early in the race but remounted, ultimately scoring the final point, thanks in-part to an unusually high number of retirements and off-track excursions by other riders.

Valentino Rossi chose to race with winglets in Austin. They weren’t helpful.

The first two laps of the race came and went and I still couldn’t quite figure out a decent composition so I decided to try a wide angle for the third.

Moments after snapping this photo, loud gasps and groans suddenly erupted from the nearby crowd of spectators.

I wouldn’t realize for another half a lap that a certain nine-time world champion had crashed out of the race.