Too much dust!!

Eating dust yeah!!! When you shoot rally cars they always look great if they are kicking heaps of dust and this weekend we had huge clouds of the stuff. The Coffs Coast Rally is held on the fast forest roads near Coffs Harbour on the beautiful north coast of New South Wales. A combined New South Wales & Queensland Rally Series round it gave us a good field of 65 cars to shoot.

With such an big variety of interesting cars from EVO's and WRX's to a Porsche 911 and a TR7 all I had to do was find a good couple of spots to shoot from. Being such a great drivers rally meant there were lots of fast sweeping roads but not that many obvious photo spots. Fortunately my friend Neil "Blacky" Blackbourn had shot it before and pointed out a couple that were great. The first spot was a sharp left hander, the light was excellent and the cars kicked up heaps of dust. There was just enough breeze to clear the dust for the next car as well.

Next up was a very tight right hander in a steep gully. I went for a wander and found a couple of bumps that looked interesting and as soon as the zero car came through I knew it would be good for air if the cars could get enough traction. The first car was an EVO and sure enough with it's 4wd it hit the first bump and bounced off the top of the second one, excellent! I rang Blacky to let him know and he joined me. Most of the 4WD cars got air but, and I never thought I'd say this, there was too much dust!! Being in a gully huge thick clouds of the stuff just hung in the air for ages. My gear and I looked like I had been shooting in a dust storm as I was coverered in it.But the shots were great and I had a fun day but now I just need to work out how to get all the dust out of all my gear. My black Lowepro S&F belt and cases are now a very nice sandy colour!

And now for something completely different

And now for something completely different.
I have just been down to Tasmania yet again, although not for cars this time but be part of the team shooting the Australian Secondary School Swimming Championships at the Hobart Aquatic Centre. With over 400 competitors from all over the country it was a showcase of the next generation of Ian Thorpes and Susie O'Neils. In fact one of the records broken during the event was held by the Thorpedo.

Conditions were far from perfect as we struggled for light. We couldn't use flash so were nearly always shooting at 800 iso or more! Because of the huge temperature difference between the 9c outside, cooled by the snow on Mount Wellington, and the humid 30c inside caused by lots of very fit 13-19 year olds, it took quite a while for the gear to stop misting up as well.

But after shooting over 4000 images in 3 days I was very pleased with the results and I certainly didn't have to worry about eating dust or dodging low flying rocks.The only downside is seeing all these super fit young athletes is that I felt decidedly old and overweight so I must go on a diet! I think I'll start it tomorrow as I've too many pics to edit today so lets order pizza!

The images you see here are a few of my favourites.

Classic metal

What a glorious day to be in the forests just inland from Port Macquarie on the beautiful NSW north coast. This weekend saw the running of the Rally of Port Macquarie part of the Southern Cross Rally Series. This series is for pre 1990 rally cars and we saw a pretty wide variety of classic metal.

Unfortunately there was a fairly high attrition rate so come day 2 only 16 runners of the 25 entries were left. Jeff David's Porsche 911 went very early on day 1 with clutch problems and Matt Streeton's Mercedes cracked its sump. The conditions really lived up to the name of my blog as we were all eating dust but it made for some nice shots.