Photo of the month in Motorsport News, cool!

Photo of the month in Motorsport News, cool!

And words straight from the blog too.

Piper Navajo was a bit quicker than the Cessna

I've done a bit of aerial photo graphy over the years but never had the opportunity to shoot air to air. A new aviation charter business in Port Macquarie commissioned me to create a logo and website for them. (www.aviationcharters.com.au)

So this gave me the perfect excuse to get a couple of planes and go for a fly and get some aerial shots. The twin engined Piper Navajo was a bit quicker than the Cessna I was in but at least I could shoot with the window down. The clients & I are all really happy with the shots and I particularly like the one with Port Macquarie in the background.

Picture of the month

Got a few pics in the latest online edition of Motorsport News from Rally Qld & Targa including this nice big one on the back page. Apparently my shot of Simon playing in the water is going to be picture of the month in the next magazine issue. Pretty cool but who is this Roger bloke???

Drifting sideways and sent water everywhere

What a way to start a weekend. For the first shot on the first day of Rally Queensland I headed to the fabulous railway bridge in the "Kadanga Long" stage. There is a variety of interesting wide shots that you can get here from both on top of and below the bridge. It's quite rustic so keeping bits of the bridge in the photo adds to the atmosphere of the shot.

However the sun was very low and intense early on so I decided to head to the top of the bridge and shoot tight down onto the watersplash with the cars backlit. I used a fast 1/800th sec shutter speed to freeze the water as the cars hit the splash. It was quite a nice shot but then along came Simon & Sue Evans. Simon attacked the corner fast and went through the watersplash drifting sideways and sent water everywhere. Just fantastic and a perfect shot in the bag on my first stage. Thanks Simon, I couldn't have done it without you!

We then headed of to the main spectator point which was a bit dull and heavily backlit for the one decent corner but the final stage of the day was great. A heavily shaded water splash with dappled light when the sun came out. I think the photos speak for themselves. Rally Qld was then over for me for another year and early Sunday I had to return home with a quick 750km's back down the Pacific Hwy.

Can't see another soul

Just a quick 700kms up the highway today. I am now on the Sunshine Coast in QLD which is a bit of a change from Tassie! I'm here for Rally Queensland which is a joint Asia Pacific Rally Championship and Australian Rally Championship round. One of the highlights will be seeing World Rally Championship star Chris Atkinson although he says he won't be flat out as he is only driving the zero car. Chris not flat out will still be very quick and I'm sure Cody will be trying to catch him. I got to shoot a fair few different pics of Chris which was nice of him.

Highlight of my day was undoubtedly catching up with Christophe Barriere-Varju. Christophe is one of my heroes. He competes on a motorcycle in The Dakar every year as well as races like the Finke & Dubai Rally. It was quite interesting to get his views on the difference between Africa and South America where Dakar was held this year. Christophe just did not think it was the same and more like a long Baja. It certainly was not as challenging navigation wise and he felt you did not get the same feeling of wilderness as you do in Africa. There you can't see another soul for miles just awesome landscape but in South America there seemed to be people everywhere. Although he did love the enthusiasm of the crowds and got a sore shoulder from waving and shaking hands. What an inspirational guy. I would love to shoot Dakar one year, maybe when it goes back to Africa again. As Christophe says "dreams do come true".

A Ferrari 308 in a ditch

The final day is from Strahan the Hobart and includes the famous Queenstown stage and the awesome 47km stage of Mount Arrowsmith. The day dawned to be wet and misty. I had planned on going up to Mt Arrowsmith if there was the chance of snow but it was not quite cold enough so I settled down on the famous twisty road heading up out of Queenstown. I knew it was damp but when a Daytona Coupe that was in the tour drove into a rock wall right in front of me I thought this could be interesting.

Sure enough there was lots of slipping and sliding but only 1 major incident with a BMW 2002TI which had it's front caved in. A lot of drivers tend to relax when they get above the bends and go a bit too hard and every year there are cars of the road in the last part of the stage but this year was the worst yet.

We had a Ferrari 308 in a ditch, a Porsche 944 on it's roof but the worst was Kevin weekes Lamborghini Gallardo. I was right behind the police sweep car and when I came on the scene I thought it was really bad. He had come down a fairly narrow piece of road with a left but slide sideways and would have gone from 200kph to zero in about 20 foot. It looked really bad and when they bought his wife and the chaplain down I thought the worst. Fortunately they build those Lambos tough. They had to cut the doors off to get Kevin and his navigator Rebecca out. They were both airlifted to hospital injured but not life threatening thank goodness.

So we finally arrived in Hobart for the ceremonial finish. Congratulations to Tony Quinn & Naomi Tillet on winning the modern class and overall in their monster Nissan GTR. I picked them to win on media day. I don't know but it seemed that the fast guys were all pushing harder than ever before. Very rarely do you see Jim Richards make a mistake let alone crash out. Kevin Weekes had his big off as well but Jason White in his Lamboghini Gallardo pushed Quinn hard all the way and finished second outright. Despite suffering flu early on Rex Broadbent won the late classic for the 3rd time.

As for the Mazdas Brendan & Rhianon finished third in the showroom class after being penalised for tyres and Steve & Bernie in the RX8 finished 10th outright which was an amazing result considering how new the car was and the technical issues like a gearbox with 2 gears. He was really quick when it ran properly and caught Warwick in his Porcshe GT3 halfway through Cethana. So enough of the cold and rain next weekend I am on the Sunshine Coast for the Asia Pacific Rally Championship stay tuned.

Wearing tyres, hot brakes and slippery roads.

Targa Tasmania is not called the ultimate tarmac rally for nothing. Trying to complete 5 days of competitive racing stages all over Tasmania on one set of tyres can be a big ask. Especially when it started raining hard as we headed down to the wild west coast at the end of day 4. The final stage was between Queenstown & Strahan, 33kms of twists, turns and rain. I walked into the stage and and found a good spot looking down on the cars for a nice tight pan in the gloom. Once the 999 sweep car had gone through I followed to shoot the Mazda cars servicing at Strahan.

So we have cars being driven fast with wearing tyres, hot brakes and slippery roads. Not a good combination. As I drove through the stage there was a Nissan GTR totalled in a big spin, a Porsche Carrera up in the trees, the remains of something else all over the road which somehow had managed to continue and then to cap it off the 999 sweep car on the final corner of the stage with it's back end caved in. They are supposed to be the responsible ones! Fortunately all drivers and navigators were fine.