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Perhaps because Casey Stoner was my favorite rider to photograph, it seemed to me that he wore a dark visor more often than others.

I really like images that show the riders’ faces while they’re at work. Though you can observe much from body language, it’s the face, and in particular, the eyes, that reveal the most.

Casey did wear light visors for rainy sessions, if not most of the time then at least often enough that I have a fair number of images with his face visible. But his darkest visor, worn on bright days, was so dark there was no hope of seeing his face even in corners where the light was revealing other riders’ faces.

Pit lane sometimes takes the degree of tint out of the equation, as shown above, but not always. Some riders close their visors as soon as they stand up to walk out of the box. So if I see a rider with his visor up, I usually start firing.

Of course, no one wears a dark visor more reliably than Valentino Rossi. Even his rain/night visor options are pretty dark, making images like this rare enough indeed.

Photography and text: ©2014 by Scott Jones / PHOTO.GP – All Rights Reserved

Camera Info: Nikon D4 with Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8

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