Modernpics – The Blog

Cooking up a storm at the Finals

Wow what a season its been there has been high points and low points but we’ve made it, this is it the finals it all boils down to this. Championships were won and lost on the quarter mile of sticky black tarmac in the quiet little village of Poddington at this years FIA European Finals.

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 Showtime 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 of John Atkinson launching off the line with his sun Tom watching on 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 Wilson 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.

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

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

Hey guys hope you enjoyed reading that, more to follow shortly dont forget that you can join me on the modernpics facebook page. If you want to look at more really cool pics check out europes best drag racing image library

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 3:45 pm and is filed under Drag Racing, Picture posts and tagged with Dominic Romney, Drag racing, dragracing, FIA, Fia European Finals, Modernpics, photography, Pro Mod, Santa Pod, Top Fuel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.