I feel pretty fortunate to say that most of my shoots don’t involve much in the way of danger. Sure there are fires and other situations that we have to be smart about covering, but there’s rarely a shoot where I get a little nervous at.

That changed while shooting a practice day at the Maryhill Festival of Speed — of the world’s premier downhill skateboard and street luge events.

Not only did I have to content with the heat on the day — nearly 100 degrees down in Goldendale along with a measured asphalt temp of around 160 degrees — but standing next to a road where racers were blowing by me at more than 45 miles per hour.

Luckily photo editor Gordon King set me up with a nice little remote setup to use for low-angle, tight action shots of the racers. This allowed me to operate a second camera with a trigger attached from a much safer position.

Here’s a look at my remote setup on the second corner of the race called, “The Never Ending Turn.”
I used my Canon 5D Mark iii with a 16-35 f2.8 and a Pocket Wizard. I set my ISO at 400 which allowed me to crank up the shutter speed to 6400 to stop the motion of the racers.

After all was said and done — and the heat exhaustion wore off — I would probably call this my favorite shoot I’ve had here in my nearly two years at the Herald-Republic.

Here’s a look at some of the shots I got.

Spencer Smith, left, from Seattle and Job Crisostomo, center, from Brazil go into the third turn of their practice run at the Maryhill Festival of Speed on Thursday, June 25, 2015, in Goldendale, Wash.
More than 200 athletes from across the world are participating in this year’s competitions which include downhill skateboarding in several categories and street luge.
(MADISON McCORD/Yakima Herald-Republic)

— Madison