Henry Pang, a professional photographer who captured the golden era of Formula 1 racing during the 1980s, is experiencing an extraordinary artistic revival decades after his active career. His stunning photographs of legendary drivers like Ayrton Senna remained largely unseen as physical prints until his son Jeffrey, who operates a popular car drifting YouTube channel, sparked new interest in the archive. This digital-age discovery has led to the first-ever production of fine art prints from Pang's extensive collection of motorsport images, bringing new life to historical moments from one of racing's most dramatic decades.
The primary obstacle to printing Pang's work lay in the photographic technology of his era. During the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, professional motorsport photographers predominantly shot on color transparency slides, a medium specifically designed for magazine reproduction rather than standalone exhibition prints. As Henry Pang explained in a recent YouTube documentary, the press printing process of that time, known as color separation, required positive transparencies that could be converted to CMYK inks for publication. These slides were never intended for direct photographic printing, creating a technical gap between the archival materials and modern fine art production methods.
Jeffrey Pang initially attempted to digitize his father's slides using conventional flatbed scanning equipment, but the results proved insufficient for large-format printing. While the scans might suffice for social media sharing, they lacked the resolution and dynamic range needed for gallery-quality reproduction. Professional drum scanners capable of meeting these standards remain prohibitively expensive and increasingly rare, placing them out of reach for most independent archiving projects. Recognizing this limitation, Henry Pang drew upon his deep photographic expertise to devise an innovative alternative solution that leveraged contemporary digital camera technology.
The breakthrough came through a meticulous digitization process using a 36-megapixel Nikon D800 camera equipped with a 55mm macro lens, extension tubes, and a professional copy stand positioned over a lightbox. This setup allowed for high-resolution capture of each transparency, though the procedure demanded careful manual focusing for every single frame. The results proved spectacular, revealing intricate details invisible in the flatbed scans, including the subtle distortion of air around speeding vehicles and nuanced expressions on drivers' faces. One particularly striking image shows the wake of air trailing Gerhard Berger's Ferrari, while another captures Ayrton Senna's trademark intensity during a conversation with his engineers.
With high-quality digital files secured, Jeffrey traveled to Foto Box, a specialized film lab in Toronto, to produce chromogenic prints using traditional photochemical processes. The lab's equipment exposes light-sensitive paper much like an analog enlarger, then processes the material through a series of chemical baths and water rinses before drying the final print. This hybrid approach—digital capture followed by analog printing—creates a bridge between eras, honoring the original analog capture while utilizing modern workflow efficiency. The resulting prints maintain the depth and character of classic photographic processes while showcasing the exceptional clarity of Pang's original lenswork.
The project's completion marked an emotional milestone for both father and son, as Henry Pang finally held physical prints of images he had only previously seen as tiny transparencies or magazine reproductions. For Jeffrey, the experience deepened his appreciation for his father's craft and created a meaningful intersection between their shared passion for automotive culture across different mediums. The prints are now available for purchase, offering racing enthusiasts and photography collectors access to previously unseen perspectives from Formula 1's most romantic era. This collaboration also highlights a broader trend of preserving analog photographic archives through innovative digital workflows, ensuring that important visual histories are not lost to technological obsolescence.
