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!