I have worked in and around the Supercars sport for over 15 years. Professionally covering my first race event to run in the Courier Mail way back in 2007. Since then I have freelanced for a variety of editorial media, and worked embedded directly for teams, specifically the Holden Racing Team (4 Years), and Erebus Motorsport (3 years). This work encompassed editorial photography, video production for online/social and broadcast, and in the case of working directly for teams, there live management of their social media channels.

Having worked in and around the sport has given me an insight in to most aspects of the sport, and I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know so many of the drivers and amazing crew that work so hard to make the sport possible.

The visual storytelling is obviously very different between editorial work, from a journalistic perspective, compared to working commercialy with teams and sponsors, but having the basis of editorial work, prepared me to even better service teams and commercial clients. This is especially true of then you “know” what editorial outlets will want to run and the kind of photography and video production that they are looking for, and being able to create that style of work, while still curating it “through the lens” of the team or sponsor that your work is representing.

In the race to maintain and grow engagement, it’s import to provide image consumers with something new. The way I approach that, especially when working with teams directly, is to be unique, to show followers something they can’t see on broadcast or at the track, to take them truely inside the team. This has been a key theme across most of my work, but especially fun Supercars. I truely love to be able to take fans into the truck or the garage and give them some of the experience of being part of the team.

This has proven to be a successful approach, and key to being able to execute that strategy is to be able to execute almost anything on demand. In sport, you never know what’s going to happen, so having the expertise to pivot and whole new story on demand is critical. You definitely have to be prepared to “kill your darlings” when some of the best shots, your content no longer suits you commercial narrative.

The range of content may cover the full range of cinematography, editing, photography, retouching and graphic design. While strategically planning, engaging and posting a team or sponsor’s social media content.

In essence, you become a one man production company.

Agency: Freelance, Hotglue & One Nine Media.

Taking social followers and broadcast viewers inside, to get the real story from the team’s drivers, crew members and management.

Where possible, I like to challenge myself with a theme. For the first event of 2023 my personal theme was “TEAM”. Working fast, during the gridwalk to cover the team members, then running back to the garage to wrangle/grade/finish and post the images live to the team’s social media. These images were posted live as the cars came round to for up the grid for the race start.

Social media has become more important then ever. In today’s media landscape it’s an immediate connection to fans, and media. It’s the immediate public voice and personality of the team. Getting the tone of voice right is very important, it’s like crafting a persona or a character. It’s also very important to take risks, to be professional, deeply competitive, dedicated, but also be witty and charming all at the same time. In a social media kind of way; you need to be a professional competitor on track, and the one that followers want to share a beer with.

Newsrooms are continually shrinking and editorial outlets are ever more reliant on PR releases and provided content. This provides an opportunity for teams and sponsors to create, curate and provide content to editorial outlets to run. If a story is well prepared, and the imagery or film vision is premium and suitable to and editorial style, then it will likely get a run, sometimes even just “cut and paste” as is. Drawing on my editorial background, I have been able to assist many commercial sponsors and some teams in creating this style of content. Walking the line between editorial and advertorial, curated through the lens of their competitive or commercial interests.