The Formula One season concludes this weekend, and capturing F1’s speed is no easy task. Ahead of the Las Vegas Grand Prix a couple of weeks ago, we spoke with Getty Images Staff Sports Photographer Bryn Lennon about the craft, challenges, and gear behind photographing the fastest show in motorsport.
At some point over this weekend, the 2025 F1 season will thunder to a close after an unlikely three-way shootout for the World Championship. It’s been a landmark season for the sport, which has surfed a wave of newfound popularity on the back of F1: The Movie and found itself heading for a thrilling denouement after the McLaren team made repeated fumbles in the closing races. Its drivers, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, can both win the championship but so can four-time World Champion Max Verstappen. Ahead of significant rule changes coming in 2026, it’s all to play for and a huge end to a huge season.
One of the people that have captured every twist and turn along the way is Getty Images Staff Sports Photographer Bryn Lennon. Lennon has covered major sporting events around the globe, including 13 Tour de France races, 4 Olympic Games, 2 Paralympic Games and more. He began covering Formula 1 in 1999 working for Sutton Motorsport, and has since covered over 200+ F1 races, as well as Le Mans 24, the Dakar Rally, MotoGP, and WRC. In 2013, he was awarded the SJA Sports Photographer of the Year. He studied photography at The London College of Printing.
In other words, he’s a very good man to ask about the challenges of photographic F1 cars as they streak past at 200 mph plus. And, for the Las Vegas GP, and a couple of other races on the calendar he faced the further challenge of capturing the power and the glory of F1 at night.
I usually have 2 x Canon R1 bodies and an R5 MK2 which is small and light to use as a remote camera, 15-35mm, 24-70mm, 70-200mm 400mm and maybe the odd shorter prime. All the lenses are f/2.8 or faster. I don’t really change kit much between races, but I might make sure I’ve got a flash to hand for the darker night races.
It’s really the length of day and the much later finishes that are the main challenge. While we tend to start only a little bit later than usual (around 2-3 hours), we often finish a lot later (4-5 hours), which makes a far longer day.
The handful of night races on the calendar make a refreshing change. Las Vegas, as you might expect, is all about the show. There’s a lot of color, neon and flamboyant characters which are great to photograph, and showing where we are is the main aim. The paddock and track can be very dark in places, despite digital cameras being very good in low light and higher ISO. However, if there isn't much light on a subject, there isn’t much light.
When it’s dark you also need to keep an eye on the color balance as it’s easily thrown by some of the artificial lights and dominant colors. But on the whole it's great, because a lot of the messy backgrounds can turn black, and working with neon lights and signs is always fun.
One of the biggest challenges of the job is the sheer logistics of getting around the globe. These days, we have a large team, and it’s a huge effort to get everyone into a race, specifically getting the correct visas and our equipment through customs in certain countries. Travel comes with so many complications, and it constantly amazes me the amount of time, effort and energy we put in to just getting to a race—and then thinking I haven't actually taken a camera out of the bag yet!
Once there, you can almost “relax” a little bit because there’s a bit more under your control. With a lot of years’ experience under your belt, you can settle down and do what you're employed to do, which is the exciting part! Street circuits, by their nature, tend to be temporary and have bigger, larger fences with fewer holes to shoot through. You also tend to be closer to the cars, making them relatively faster and harder to pan with them.
Another challenge at times is being able to send images quickly and efficiently from your camera. Ultimately, we’re relying on the comms infrastructure of a particular country and when over a hundred thousand people arrive for race day, the airwaves can get a bit congested. In recent years, we’ve spent quite a lot of time understanding the pinch points for sending quickly from our cameras, and we’re now in a very good place with our transmission—often sending in less than 30 seconds for big racing moments and wins.
It’s both. I’m a big believer in making your own luck with experience and good judgement. However, there’s always unexpected moments that either happen right in front of you or five minutes after you’ve moved positions! As the Official Photographic Agency of F1, Getty Images has a team of photographers set up for race day for all the major Grand Prix events. This is planned out in advance with detailed race plans to make sure we’ve got every angle covered, as well as ensuring that we’ve taken all the client requirements into account.
As one of the lead photographers on the F1 brief, my race day includes covering the pre-race grid ceremony with celebrities, the race start which helps to showcase the location and circuit, and parc fermé and the podium. I’m in the unique position of shooting parc fermé from inside the barriers and also shooting from on the podium during the ceremony, which enables moments to be captured that you can’t find anywhere else. Getty Images also has commercial relationships with nine of the Formula 1 teams, with our photographers assigned to cover each team. That makes our depth of coverage on race day wide-ranging and creates opportunities for capturing iconic motorsport moments, including race drama, pit lane walks, inside the garages, at the paddock, podium-winning moments and more.
It’s a lot! Thousands - I don't like to count to be honest! Cameras now shoot at more than 30 frames per second, so it’s very easy to accumulate large numbers of frames. If you press the shutter for just one second, you will have perhaps twice as many frames as you did just a few years ago. However, I’m always reluctant to turn the frame rate down, as there’ll never be time to turn it up again when you need it for an accident or incident.
Yes! I think there’s always a need to evaluate where you’re standing, the value of shooting from that position, the likelihood of an accident, and the potential escape routes should something go wrong. Even behind strong permanent barriers, you can still be showered with carbon fiber fragments. As the car technology evolves, with higher cornering speeds and greater downforce, you sometimes see very unusual accidents — for example the Romain Grosjean crash in Bahrain in 2020.
Experience is key. You don’t have to be at F1 to be a motorsport photographer. Access to high-level motorsport is difficult and expensive for beginners, and so is the equipment. If you can put together a nice set of event images or driver feature — even on an iPhone — of a grassroots motorsport event, that’s a great starting point for a career.
I started my career covering F1 in the Bernie Ecclestone era before moving away to cover other sports, and I noticed the huge change when I returned in 2020, after Liberty Media had bought F1 in 2017. Since then there have been major changes, with new audiences and significant shifts in fan demographics, which now includes a younger and more female audience. Drive to Survive has played a pivotal role in that, along with the wider embrace of social media. These days, there’s constant sponsor activities and product engagements in the paddock on a Thursday…20 years ago, there was just a FIA press conference!
I absolutely loved Portimao in the Algarve. We only visited twice during the Covid era. It’s an amazing circuit with constant elevation changes, crests, and sweeping corners. My favorite circuits on the regular calendar would be Austria, Austin, and not forgetting Monaco!
There are so many stunning options to choose from. I’d probably have to go for the Williams FW07. I'm just waiting for a huge lottery win to buy one!
That’s tough! One of my favorites is this though of Lewis Hamilton warming up ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Portugal in 2020.