LIFE THROUGH A LENS: JAKOB EBREY
He started by taking photos at race meetings as a hobby, and soon Jakob Ebrey became the go-to motorsport photographer for teams and drivers alike. Here he shares his story and a selection of his favourite images
You’ll already know many of Jakob Ebrey’s motorsport photographs – now meet the man behind the camera as he tells the story of his career to date
OTHER THAN PERHAPS BEING ON THE grid itself, there are few better ways to spend a weekend than watching some racing at one of the UK’S multitude of historic circuits. Once the world reopens, your support will be more valuable than ever too, with club motorsport in particular heavily reliant on its audience to keep the wheels turning and ensure it survives well into the future.
And who knows, if your kids enjoy it (and chances are they’ll love it), you might also sow the seeds of a future career – just as it did for Jakob Ebrey. Today Ebrey is known as one of the country’s most prominent motorsport photographers, with more than two decades shooting the British Touring Car Championship, British Rally Championship, GT racing, Formula 1 and more, but not unlike other photographers featured in Life Through a Lens, Ebrey’s inspiration came at a very young age.
‘I used to go to Oulton Park with my parents – I probably went to my first meeting there before I could walk,’ he says, ‘and we used to just go as spectators to as many different and varied events as we could. Oulton was my local circuit so I’ve got a particular affinity with the place. We’d watch car racing, mainly at a club level, but we also used to go and watch motocross, banger racing, anything at all that was engine powered.’
You probably know what’s coming next – it wasn’t a huge leap from visiting those events to taking the odd photograph here and there. ‘My dad used to be a keen photographer,’ Ebrey explains, ‘so we’d always take a camera along with us. When I grew up a little bit I wanted to take some photos myself.’ He would then get the images developed, before returning to a meeting a few weeks later to get them signed by the drivers.
‘It was quite a big thing to do for someone 10 or 11 years old!’ Ebrey remembers, but it
also laid the groundwork for a future career. ‘A driver or two used to say, “Oh, can I get a copy of that?” or “Can I buy that?” or “Am I okay to keep it?” and from there, even at an early age, I thought this was something I could enjoy doing as more of a full-time thing going forward. A few people started saying, “You should try and get them published,” so I spoke to my local newspaper and I started doing the reports and pictures following the race weekends at Oulton Park for our local paper in Macclesfield.’
One of Ebrey’s mantras – to always leave your camera on – no doubt assisted with the next step. ‘I don’t know how it happened but I started getting a lot of crash photos, and I started thinking, “Oh, I think I got that picture” – at the time I didn’t quite know because it was still on film. I’d submit them to
Autosport and Motorsport News, and so I’d get pictures used in there as well, and from there they started booking me for race weekend photography to cover individual events.’
Not a bad gig, considering Ebrey was at the time still in the sixth form studying for his A-levels, and on the phone in his lunch breaks selling photographs to some of the drivers in the various series. ‘I was probably the only person in lower sixth at the time with a mobile phone, which was quite cool!’ he laughs.
‘One day, while I was at Oulton Park, I met a photographer called John Colley, who was pretty much the benchmark in the industry at the time for national event coverage. And John, luckily enough, was looking for someone to join his company. I finished my A-levels on a Friday and started work full-time for John on the Monday. I think that was the last time I had a weekend off! It was brilliant: John taught me so much about photography, business, and life in general, that he set me on a good path when I eventually started up my own company and spread my wings.’
That move into solo work came in around 2000, with Colley wanting to slow down his commitments just as Ebrey was keen to build his career. With Colley’s blessing, Ebrey took on some of their existing clients and developed a full business from there, with contracts for the Vauxhall BTCC squad, Renault and some of the other TOCA support championships, the British Rally Championship, F3, GT racing and various other events – many of which Ebrey continues to shoot for to this day.
Currently Ebrey’s business is a team of four, himself, fellow photographers Mike Hoyer and Stephen Fisher, and Amy Bowden-rooke, who ‘runs the business and office side of the company, which is probably more important
than what the rest of us do!’ Ebrey himself carries a hefty kit bag around with him to events: ‘In my standard go-to kit I have two Canon EOS 1D X MKIIS and an EOS 5D MKIV, and for the lenses I have a 16-35mm, a fixed 24mm which is an f/1.4, a 70-200mm, a 300mm f/2.8, a 50mm f/1.8, a 24-105mm mid-range zoom that does everything, and for the bigger events – as in the cars being further away – a 500mm lens.’
Kit is only ever part of the equation though, and Ebrey is keen to put people in the moment with his images: ‘I love photographs that put people in the position as if they were there themselves. This last year, during the pandemic, I’d say that’s been more important than ever, to try and put your pictures across as what the viewer wants to see.’
It’s also an important record of the time: ‘Doing a shot of Paddock Hill at Brands with an empty grandstand would be a massive no-no in the past! You don’t want to show that people aren’t there watching the racing. Whereas this year it’s been good to show the predicament that we’re all in, for history’s sake. With the season being pushed back effectively two months, a lot of the test days have moved to November and December too, which for me has been fantastic because the sunrise and sunsets have been phenomenal, something you never normally get in our line of work.’
It was Brands Hatch that provided one of Ebrey’s most memorable moments too, when Colin Turkington took the 2019 BTCC title. It showed that the job was about far more than shooting fast cars: ‘The pure emotion when he got out of the car was something I’ve never really seen before. He’s normally very reserved and calculated, but when he got out of the car that day, I’ve never seen somebody just so pumped to have won a championship in my life. It’s like the whole weight of the world had been taken off his shoulders in the last lap or two. He was physically overcome with it. It’s an honour to be there for those moments… sometimes you find yourself so busy in that moment you don’t really take in the significance at the time.’
With that in mind, surely Ebrey has taken shots before whose significance only came to light later on? ‘Sometimes you see a lot of pictures that you initially miss. We’ve been doing a lot of archiving during the lockdown period, and when you go back and look at the stuff now, and they bring back great memories, you think, why didn’t that get used in period? Perhaps it just wasn’t quite as relevant at the time.
‘There’s just been so many different moments though which have meant so much over the years, it’s been pretty amazing.’