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 has 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.

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 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

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

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

Andy Robinson had yet another domineering weekend in Pro Mod, taking his second round win of the championship. Andy put in a strong performance running clearly ahead of the pack with regular 6.01 second passes all weekend. A pace that the pack couldn’t match giving Andy a much deserved round win. The final saw him line up along side an ever improving Graham Ellis.

Graham matched Andy to half track however car started to move around under Graham forcing him to lift. That handed the win to Andy with a 6.1561/230.08 to a loosing 6.7528/217.10

Super Modified saw rookie Belinda Bull make massive improvements all weekend and went into the final as the underdog to seasoned championship winner Nigel Payne.  Both cars got away well and ran side by side all the way Belinda took the win with a 0.0676 of a second margin. It cant get much closer than that!

Picture wise I was on a fairly free deadline and wasn’t under much pressure to produce anything to brief, its always nice as a photographer to be basically told to go have fun and produce something worth looking at. Its weekends like this that I try to move away from the norm and play.

Right time for some pic’s
I’d been wanting to get down the bottom end of the track at santa pod for a while, unfortunately due to the schedule at the Main Event it wasn’t feasible from a track point of view however I took the opportunity this weekend to take a trip down there and see what was do able and what wasn’t, I didn’t spent long there as most of the classes didn’t need to pull the chutes.

A worth while exploration as I know what I need to be doing for next time.

Back down at the sharp end of the track. I was digging the great clouds that were floating around, Light, bright and very fluffy,

Always find bikes a little difficult to shoot as they are tiny and dont really fill the frame unless you shoot tight, which is something Im not always a fan off.

However I think this really works

Late saterday afternoon the sun started reflecting off a chunk of cloud. It was making a really strange softbox style of light on the track. A quick fiddle of some dials and an aggressive exposure set up meant  I was able to get something a little diffrent.

As racing pressed on and the sun started to drop down behind the spectator bank. I couldnt resist going agaisnt the grain and spend some time shooting into the sun , while heavily under exposing the foreground but using the tinniest hint of flash to throw some detail back into the subjects.

I printed the above off on 20×30 fine art paper (hit the buy link above to get your own copy). The detail and texture of the photo is simply stunning..
As Steve Woollatt was pushed back to the line after the burn out I saw an opportunity to really do something off the wall. Stopping the aperture down to f22 gave me the star burst on the sun that mixed in with -1 stop exposure adjustment (yes I mainly shoot in AV and TV, problem?). This exposed the horizon clouds properly, under exposed the foreground and the nd grads took care of fading the sky to a deep blue. Shame about being able to see all the dirt on my sensor/lens/filters but its part for the course when photographing drag racing, nothing photoshop wont fix .

A slightly softer effect but with Wayne Nicholson

Sunday had some of the most unusual clouds I have ever seen. I have no idea what’s going on but the clouds have a 3D feel to them that just drags you kicking and screaming into the picture.

Towards the end of the day I started playing around in the area between the two lanes. A space that allows me to get closer and lower to the cars than the outside of the track does.

Thats all for this week folks more in a fortnight from the NSRA Nostalgia Nationals.

My first time at Santa Pod so I spent friday working out what worked and what didn’t work and how I was going to have to adapt my style to fit the space.

At shakespeare County raceway I enjoy shooting long and using the clean ish background to separate the subject. However the layout of Santa pod with the gantry and the perfectly places Autoglym logo. Ment that the view was never that clear.

However the fuel cars gave me added heat waves which really helped separate the car from the background

Just a shame that the waves didn’t quite get to cover Mr Marshall as he is a little distracting in the frame.
Enough talk down to some pictures

Timo Harbermann in the worlds fastest wipple powered car.

As the sun dropped out of the sky on the sunday I got some light that was just stunning in angle and texture. Would be rude not to take full advantage of it

It then dropped even further and I reached Nirvana (not the punk rock band)

Never a fan of gloss black cars as they are hard to photograph interestingly however the light with a bit of work with the exposure in the camera, gave me something that I oddly like

Monday I spent most of the day unfortunately uploading pictures and sorting bits so that I could meet my very tight deadline. I had everything in the bag that I needed so was under no pressure to shoot on spec. So the little time I had I played around with some different things and really pushing my tecnical limits with the panning.

1/100th of a second at about the 45ft mark with a Injected nitro car, Not bad but I wanna go slower. I need to find away to practice away from the track, and ideas how are welcome

At the weekend I also had some work with ace driver and genrally nice guy Andy Carter. Cant give too much away but I can share this titbit

As always great images can be found at Europe’s best drag racing photography archive

The weekend started hot and sunny which is always a bonus. Clouds where about perfect big and fluffy and just enough to look pretty but not busy. Personaly theres nothing worse than turning up to the track and being greeted by big flat sky’s this limits your options to shoot wide to pretty much non as it creates a flat dull photo, really not cool !

Priority number one for Saterday was to get back into the swing of things as its been a good 8 months since I’ve shot Drag Racing.
Priority number two was to get decent stock images of as much of the field as i could as it was touch and go how much good weather we would have.

One major battle at the drag strip is trying to find a decent background made even more tricky by the position of the sun. At Shakespeare Country it starts behind the stands then swings round the back of the track and end up behind the wall in the other lane. Really limits you on the angles you can shoot

Before we go any further I would just like to have a rant about bikers. Bikes are great always fun to watch and photograph but could you all please put numbers on the nose of the bikes. It means that when Im sat at home looking at pictures of bikes I can work out who is who and caption them correctly. If I cant caption them I cant distribute you which means no magazine coverage. Ok rant over back to the pics.

next up i believe is the young gun Jemma Venables who certainly knows how to ride that bike and is going to be a force to be delt with very soon.

next up is my favorite photo from the weekend and it has a story to go with it to boot ! Nigel Payne Launches away from the line and powers down the quarter mile black top to set a pair of records both a speed for a Super Modified at 183.13 mph and a Super Modified ET: 7.529 seconds.

Chris Hartnel always lifts the wheels comming of the line which is great the problem is he is always up too early to get a clean angle to be able to shoot wide. This leaves you with two choices, that of shooting wide and just putting up with the crap or shooting tight head on and keeping it clean. Felt like something a bit different to the normal full car in shot head on picture so I held out and got a nice close up, something a bit different from the norm is what we like.

Later on in the day the clouds rolled in and gave a intresting texture to the sky, I kept shooting wide but not sure if I’m keen on the stormy clouds, it may work better with something burning nitro.

Mark Flavell in his Super Pro Funny car is always great to shoot and the colors really contrast against a blue sky

NFAA’s were entertaining as always however the last session on sunday night almost endded in disaster as John Wright in the Chaos car almost put his ride back in the wall at the same point where it endded up last year. Thankfully John was able to catch it this time with mear Inches to go before making contact with the barrier.

Weather was hot and sunny saterday and sundar, perfect for a play on the quarter mile and boy did people play however this year the track was also open on friday however rain soon stopped play for the day thankfully the weather didnt stay in for the entire weekend. The cue to run down the track stretch to the bottom end of the pits by mid day Saturday. 

Light by early afternoon on the Saturday had got really hard and edgy and was comming in NW to the  track which left with cars rim lit. I stopped the camera down half a stop to really punch the contrast, just playing trying to find something a little bit different.



Saterday Night finished with a Cackle Fest and fireworks show. Unfortunately the light dropped before the event got started leaving me with 1/6th of a second exposure  at iso 1600, not fun.

Sunday opened with grey skies but thankfully it cleared and blue skies and fluffy grey clouds appeard

My plan was for final round of Outlaw anglias and NFAA action to drop down to the bottom end of the run off area trying to get some killer chute shots but unfortuntly due tot he length of the run off area the Outlaws dont use the chutes and the NFAA are able to slow down enough to make exit one.  Which due to the layout of the track you are unable to get close enough to get any decent photos.

That pretty much ends my drag racing season for 2008, next year I will start the year old enough to be track side at  FIA events so the plan is to cover the entire FIA season, which should be a change to shooting at msa only events. Now the winter is here its back to the normal job of shooting news and hopefully lots more sports. Now roll on the 2009 season!

Loads more drag racing photos .