2009 European Finals Santa Pod

Well me!

The Renault MSA young Motorsport Photographer of the year in the past has been won by some massive names in the sport, recent winners feature Jakob Ebrey, Drew Gibson and Glenn Dunbar , to name just a few.I honestly felt that I didn’t stand a chance for an award that has a histroy of being claimed by some big names.  However I got a call from organizer Ben Taylor early on 22nd of dec telling me that I had been chosen as the Renault MSA young Motorsport Photographer of the year 2009.

The awards were established in 2002 with support from Renault UK Limited,the awards are designed to recognise and encourage the new generation of motor sport reporters and photographers working within UK motor sport. A panel of recognised experts from the sport and the media will consider the applications and the eventual winners will receive their awards at the MSA’s star-studded ‘Night of Champions’ ceremony in January.

A great way to start 2010 I hope this is a sign of things to come! Now roll on main event !

I haven’t been around for an while. I haven’t forgotten or moved onto better things I have just been with out internet and haven’t really been able to update the blog. I’m back online now (thank god how did we ever cope before).  I have a few things to share but a couple of them I’ve gotta wait till publication so keep checking back ( or subscribe on the right) as there will be updates coming!

As we draw ever closer to the end of the year I thought  I best put up what are my best pics of 2009 . 5 countries and 33 days spent next to the race track from the 1,000’s of frames that I took I think these are the best of the bunch.

If you wanna check out the best images from each round here check out the links bellow

Picture post from Springspeed

Picture Post from Main Event

Picture Post from The Summer Nationals

Picture Post from the NSRA Nostalgia Nationals

Picture Post from the FHRA Nitro Nationals

Picture Post from the Open Sports Nationals

Picture Post From the FIA European Finals

Picture post from the NSRA Hot Rod Drags

To finish my favorite images from this year have to be

What will 2010 hold? Who knows, more sun  and fast racing for sure but hopefully some night racing, a trip to america and a couple of other things if everything goes to plan but we’ll have to wait and see.

As some of you may be aware every year I do a calendar that features some of my finest photos from the last 12 months, this year’s is printed and up for grabs Printed on high quality 300gsm paper Hot Rod 2010 is a step beyond your normal calendar.

Priced at a £10 they are perfect gifts or cheep enough to stick up on the wall at work.

Only 100 will ever be printed so order now to avoid missing out

For more details and to see a preview of some of the images that it contains hit the link bellow

Hot Rod 2010 – The Calendar

Twice a year shakespeare country raceway sees a influx of nostalgia hot rod’s and custom cars all eager to play on the shiny quarter-mile blacktop hidden in the Stratford country side.

For me on the other hand its a opportunity to photograph some cool cars that are a little different to the norm you see on the track. Every year I do a calendar made up of some of the best Hot Rodding photography from the last 12 months , I’m very much of the belief that a hot rod should be used and abused and this event gives me the opportunity to grab some great shots of hot rods being well and truly abused.

Friday Night.

Before the racing even started I went to catch up with wild bunch racer and all round nice guy Chris Hartnell.

Lighting wise its dead simple brolly on just infront and about 3ft out of rear tire facing side on to the car. then a second light just in front of the car facing straight back to light up the front of the car. Bounce Cards and the such like where then used to add fill to shadows and the such like to help “sculpt the light”

The Sun was dropping all the time and I was fast running out of light. to round the night off I strapped the camera onto the car and sent Chris on his way

Saturday & Sunday

This weekend was a bit different to a normal one at the track as my main target was to get a nice set of images that I can use in the calendar

First things first its my epic fail for the weekend

Great shot but I just feel that it needed some fill light to make the car pop, but just look at the shape in that smoke, ohh well always next time !
There was some interesting lighting by the end of Saturday giving a great feeling of dusk and adding some great tones to the images.

Sunday I continued to play around looking for the unusual and the intresting

PWRD always do some great paint designs but I really love the way that wendy bakers logo reflects giving the image some extra pop something that really helps when your shooting on the shadow side of the car.

Not much in the way of words but some pretty cool photos !

He’s how I went about shooting the weekend
Thursday

Back to back sports man racing, I think in total all classes had 6 rounds of qualifiers. The morning started with a massive big expanse of blue sky and not much more so I slapped on the trusty ND grad and Circular Polarizer and aimed my lens to the sky.

by about 11 oclock some nice fluffy clouds surfaced which added some nice elements to brake up that expanse of sky

After a while the cloud closed in and really flattened the light off totally killing the angle

Quick Lens change later and I was back to shooting tight stocky stuff, something its always well worth having in the archive

Both Shot fairly loose so that they can be cropped to suit the use.

The Sky Was moving pretty quick all day and the sky cleared in time for John Bradshaw to roll round in his stunning 350z.

Wheelies were fairly common all weekend but I was not expecting S/Pro Nick Good to get such air under his front wheels with such a long dragster

Tommi Haapanen had for a while had a desire to drive a Fuel Flopper and for his birthday his wife (and top fuel driver) Anita Mäkelä made it happen with buying him a pass in the Show time funny car

He made half track before the car made a move for the wall and he shut it off. Tommy then didn’t stop smiling all weekend, some how I think we will be seeing him in his own flopper before too long.
By the end of the day the sun started to drop behind the bank, on my way back to the press office I noticed this scene nocking the exposure down a stop and a half gave me a great shot.

Friday
More blue skies and a much bigger crowd for the friday.
Wheelies were again the order of the day from the sportsman ranks

Harald Sturhan in his unusual Pro Stock got very out of shape and made a dive for the tree thankfully some quick driving got him back on the straight and narrow.

Working the wall you get fairly accustomed to taking a shower mainly in the form of warm nitro. Not a special shot but this was the first shower of the weekend bit of a heavy soaking as well with two or three cylinders out by the time Dave got along side me

As the day drew to a close I walked down to the run off area which is a good half a mile plus walk. Bit of a wasted journey as I didn’t get what I wanted but never mind



Saturday
Bigger crowds again and even more blue skies. I settled down to shooting pans with plenty of blue skies



Top Fuel came round and I headed into the center island to have my very core shaken. There is no experience like being stood between two top fuel motors but it is something that every one should experience at least once, it will blow your mind.


Then the NFAA’s came around and it was time for nitro shower number two

As the afternoon progressed the sun dropped again back down behind the bank. Going against all the basic rules of photography Started shooting straight into it with the fuel cars


Think these next two came out the best by far


I continued to break the rules (I’m such a naughty boy!) and as every one made the ritural moving to the other side of the track I stayed on the now “dark side”. Using the 300mm with the Circular Polarizer I cut the reflections out of the windscreen and bonnet and put them back into the dark side of the car.



To end the day I moved round to the light side of the track. The track was now basking in some deep orange light, Warming the white balance up a little to really emphasize it. I rounded off the day with a bit of NFAA action

Bob Glassup has to have one of the prettiest modern altereds on the circuit.

I made my way back into the pits to catch up with my good friends at Motorpsycho who had spent the weekend putting their new altered together, I got their just as they started up the rodeck V8 powered monster, it would be rude not to take some pictures

Sunday

After the amazing weather of the week before Sunday was a let down gray skies pretty much all day.
Big nitro cloud from both cars as they launch off the line

Shortly afterwards that was taken Stig erm well lost a wheel. I completely missed the incident due to being blocked by a inconsiderate photographer, however I did manage to find this video of the freak accident. Video of Stig “Reliant Robin” Neergaard

As the day pressed on I got more and more frustrated with shooting tight and bright head on stock stuff, due to the weather shooting wide was a no go. I then had the idea of shooting head on to keep the image clean but really slowing the shutter down and panning the shot in a semi side on kinda style, didn’t think for a minuet it would work  but i was surprised to see it actually did!




Then the fuel bike final came around and it worked really well

And that pretty much rounds up my weekend and European Season what a year it has been not long left now till may when we get to do it all over again

Couple of weeks ago I got a call from my client, asking if i could head on over to Cadwell park and snap some shots of Steve Plater testing. The client wanted two types of images

1. Images that could bolster their stock archive for the next 4 to 5 months 
2. Images that could be used in connection with Steve Plater competing at Cadwell park. 

before we get down to pictures I’m just gunna run you through my thought process, before I get to a job like this. Sometimes this can be over a couple of days however in this case it all happened while I was in the car on the way to the track.

Its always fairly important to go into a job like this knowing what you need to get out of it other wise its all to easy to shoot what you want and not for fill the clients requirements. 

1. I need really bright and tight images that are fairly non-descript and dont particulay look like they are from any one track. 
2. I need images that are clearly from Cadwell.

With me so far?

For 1 the images I am going to be looking at getting are 

Tight apex of the corner stuff

Crest of the hill is always a good clean shot, subs often also quite like it shot a little loose as they can use the dead space (in this case the tarmac) to put text over and produce a interesting layout.

Another example of creating dead space

Head on is always a good way to shoot. When doing any sort of job like this where your never too sure what they want its always worth shooting the same image but in a couple of diffrent ways
Loose!

Tight!

Landscape

Ok so thats number one sorted what about point number two. 

Ok so number two is

images that are clearly from Cadwell.

This means that I want to be working with the location and the characteristics that are unique to the track for Cadwell one thing stands out, The mountain! 

Again you can never shoot the shot enough diffrent ways 

Tight

Loose

Slow

and so on (I’m sure you get the idea)

Normaly for locating shots I would shoot wide and get the abiance going on however it was wet (very wet) dull gray and not great photos for “showing off the surroundings”
However Cadwell is a very wooded track so I used the trees to add features to the images

Final thing to shoot is some pit stuff Steve doing his job, interacting with the media and also just some posed up portraits.

Steve Plater possible the most smiley man in Uk Motorbike racing, however its always good to get them with a few different expressions.
Sad

Happy!

That about rounds up a very hectic 3 hours at a wet and muddy Cadwell Park

Check out all the images in the Steve Plater Image Collection

Its been a while, I’ve been busy loads of things to share with you good people when I get the chance but for the mean time here is what I got up to at the open sports nationals from a very hot Shakespeare county raceway

The weekend saw several hundred speed hungry racers descend on the sleepy village of Long Marston for the 4th annual Open Sports Nationals, hot weather insured lots of very close racing.

Weather conditions were hot and sunny however the cloud cover was giving some very flat and uninspired light, had to brake out the really soft ND grads and had to ride the exposure really hard to be able to put and contrast and pop back into the photos.

I’m always concious about not getting repetitive with only having two national tracks in the uk its all too easy to get stuck in a rut and shoot every thing the same, which is going to get dull and boring to look at.

300mm and a little bit of a crop let me get this tidy image of a biker against the checkered wall. clean and simple, could do with some tire smoke but I think it still works well.

shooting into the sun is always great with burn out smoke and a darker colour car .

Same shot but the sun is at a completely different angle to the car and see how it completely changes the shot.

Empty stands really don’t help the shot but there is not much I can do about that

late friday the sun dropped out the sky leaving the light coming from the back right of the car, limits you to pretty much shooting from behind or side on, nocked the exposure down a stop or two and as able to get bob glassup side lit in an attempt to be “arty”

Always on the look out for something a little odd or different to tell a story, Here Dave Crunkhorn has a nap in the fire up lanes while waiting for a oil down to be cleared up.

Bit of a panaramic shot as Jason Rew spins the tires on his Out law flat four car.

Im a burn out photo fanatic if I’m honest however the start lines are often not the clearest of places to shoot and I just love the way the tire smoke blends the background into the sky

Shot on the 70-200 something I rarely use in drag racing as its just such a common lens and angle. However I was looking for something a little diffrent so I pulled it out to see what I could do. Like this shot, for such a long focal lenght the car really over powers the frame. If your wondering yes that is full frame with no crop

70mm again and tiny bit of fill flash to give the image some definition think the dropped cylinder really adds to the image.

Back on with the 16-35 and I really started to slow the shutter speed down to get some movement into the shots

Not one to waste a free weekend, I caught up with my good  friend Robyn to throw some light around have some fun and make some cool pin up pictures.

To start with we headded down the road to bristol to The Lanes which is a killer period Bowling Alley and Diner.

After siding around on the polished floor of the alleys we headded over the other end of the building to get a milkshake take some pictures in the Diner.

Lighting for these was pretty dam simple shoot through brolly for fill to the face then a 3/4 CTO gell'd flash from over her shoulders to add in some rim lighting and add some depth. Then ambient was shot at 3000k at 2/3rd of a stop under to give a early evening sort of feeling to the pictures .

Next stop was some really cool period lamp post Robyn has spotted round the corner from hers so we waited for the light to drop and the sky to go a deep blue before heading out

Lighting for this one was super simple, the camera was set to 7200k white ballence to really blue out everything bar from the tungsten lighting, then to match the flash to the street light I threw on a full CTO filter and got the light as high as I could. “Crushing the Brolly” to really controll the light so I could emulate the soft but semi-focused light of the street lamp, all pretty simple stuff really.

Sunday we hit the local Launderette, first a quick example of how just changing the color ballence on the camera can have a massive effect on the mood of a picture

3400k white balance will give you the above. Didnt like this felt the light didnt suit the mood of the clothing so I dropped the White Balance to 6400k and let the kool blue tones rock on!

A quick outfit change to something a little more period. Was really wanting to give it the look of shot from the 50’s that often have quite a yellow tinge inside, so I nocked the White Balance back down to somewhere around 3400k, dropped the hight of the light by about two ft to make it look like the setting sun is glowing in through the window.

Getting the light back up high cooling the White Balance off and moving the light back to give a soft even glow let me get something that you could easily mistake as being from straight out the 50’s

After the launderette we had some time to kill before I had to head off.

The above was pretty simply lit Just kept moving the main light around to suppress any shadows I didn’t want

Just to finish with what has to be the best photo from the weekend, I know I started the post with it but I just gotta show you it again!

Thats it people! I have a couple of posts that I need to catch up on including the film photo’s from the NSRA Nos Nats and a Day with Steve Plater.

Alastaro has some interesting aesthetics and for a portion of the day your shooting backlit which is always a extra challenge but gives some great opportunities to have a play.

Before we get down to pictures just a quick word of warning, never ever let your sensor get in to this sort of state its going to give you nightmares, I dont even want to think about what is on it.

Now that that’s over and done with down to business. At the track I know what my “safeties” are and I know that when I’t comes down to finals time that I can shoot in that fashion and get useable shots. But Untill then I love to play.

In drag racing there are only a handful of locations that you can shoot from this means you have to really work what you have to get anything diffrent. For the above its just shot off at 16mm in AV mode with 2 stop’s of EV dialed in. Think it works semi well just wish there was more tyre smoke involved

I was browisng Mark J Rebilas amazing blog when i came across some pics of one of the america top fuel guys going past a crew member, it kinda got me thinking. I knew that Jummy Alund had a thing of trying to run over his crew men took me a while to work out how to shoot it and get it looking good but I think the above works nicely.

Andy Willsheer shoots Kenneth Soderstrom on the launch. Again just trying something a little different think the compositial element of Andy adds depth and some lateral perspective to the frame.


I’ve owned a polarising filter for a while however never really used it much. Was just playing around in the qualifers and really love the effect it gives to blue skies.

The wall behind the start line was littered with holes, I assume to let the wind pass through with out putting too much stress on the structure. It gave a great framing opportunity for a throughout the key hole style shot.

Just going off on a tangent for a moment a couple of unusual things I spotted while I was over in finland.
Firstly

health and safety? whats that ! Although I’ll give the guy his due’s he is fairly well camouflaged.
And secondly

You cant see it very well but the guy has three cameras mounted onto a old gun stock, not sure what customs would think about trying to bring such a contraption into the country. No idea what he is doing but I think its some form of super slow mo rig as he was using three casio exilim highspeed cameras, would love to see the results of just what he was doing.

Here you can see just how much difference the color of a car can have on the picture Stig (blue car) makes the picture looks very dark and bottom heavy however the white in Andy’s car really breaks the black of the tarmac up and makes the picture look more balanced. Also you cant see it very well but in the pic of Andy that is a full set of lights on the tree hows that for reactions!

Speaking of reactions, I was off loading my pics early monday morning and stumbled across this

Ok so it was more luck that judgement but it still makes for a fairly interesting picture.

The great thing about Finland is that this time of year it doesn’t see any darkness, which firstly is great for topping up your tan and secondly it means that you get about 6 hours of really nice sunset lighting.

The skies in Finland were fairly unimpressive compared to some of the stunning formations we see in the uk, however I did manage to get a couple of nice looking shots

love the way that the front wheel is still not turning in the shot above for me really add’s something to the picture.

For me the best “cloud picture of the weekend has to be this

Its just such a unusual formation and has some real depth going on. hkigyu8crw

I spent most of the weekend getting reacquainted with an old friend and shooting some of the last frames with them that I ever will, if you have yet to here Kodak are discontinuing Kodachrome Slide film, the iconic look and style of a bygone era will soon be lost for ever. For commercial reasons I moved to a mainly digital outfit some 4 years ago, ever since my film set up has sat somewhat unused, I took the opertunity of the NSRA Nos Nats to break out the old EOS 5 and shoot off some Kodachrome before its too late. The Images should be back with me in the next 6 ish weeks as soon as they are back I’ll throw them up for the world to see. As well as shooting the kodachrome I was playing with some nice MACOPHOT ORT 25 black and white film. First time playing with such and extreme film but as the results bellow show it was well worth it, Anything you see below thats Black and white is Macophot.

Anyways enough reminiscing down to some pics.

As well as playing with the cars I caught up with my good friend and very pretty Lady, Robyn. I had a photo Idea that I had been wanting to try for a while, Unfortunately I didn’t have the style of car to pull off exactly what I wanted so had to compromise a bit however I still think the end photos are well worth checking out.

Thats It folks way more was shot on film but that wont be back for a while, when it is I’ll share the love of Kodachrome.
Let me know what ya think