World Time Attack.

The inaugural World Time Attack championships took place Last week in Sydney at Eastern Creek Raceway. It was a huge success! Although time attack racing is relatively new to Australia I have a feeling it will be around for a long time to come.

I was there shooting the event for MOTOR magazine who were sponsors of the event, it was a cool assignment and a bit different from the normal car comparo's. As this was a world class event, cars from the USA, Japan and New Zealand took part. As well as some of the fastest home grown cars. In the end it was Tarzan Yamada taking the win with a blistering 1min 30.5sec lap! To put that in Perspective to the Australian Readers, thats faster than a V8 supercar (from several years ago mind you) Not bad for a essentially road based semi slick!

Apologies for the lack of images, once the story is published in the August Issue of MOTOR I will post some more.
I hope to see Time Attack racing back bigger and better next year.

Deadlines...

The only bad thing about editorial photography is the constant deadlines... Chained to my desk, processing photo after photo, decloning rigs, fixing sensor dust, tweaking this and changing that. The end doesn't seem in sight!

The Final AutoSalon issue.

Just finished reading the final ever issue of AutoSalon Magazine, sad to see such a great publication go for what seems to be another victim of the digital media of today.

Although I never got to work for ASM, it was one of the few publication I did wish toshoot for. The layout and design of this magazine was on a completly different level to everything else in Australia. Photography wise Mark Pakula seemed to just raise the level every issue and the shoot of the JDM Concept Integra by Felix was top notch.

Get it now at your local newsagency, it's a pretty special read. This is one mag issue that won't be going to the tip.

JDMST End of Month Meetup

JDMstyletuning had their traditional end of Month meetups last night and it was a big one! Cars from all genres, era's and fiscal values be it a Nissan Micro with pedobear stickers or Porsche GT2.

Pair of Nice S15's, love the Nismo Stripe.




JType Ninja's in force.



Godzilla, in all it's glory



Big turnout to this meet, well in excess of 50 cars I would guess.



This Soarer had amazing BBS rims, would have been atleast 11 inches wide!



VTEC-YO!


Nissan Cube and Suzuki Cappacino, two oddball JDM imports. Love the cube.



Kula's Track inspired MX5, The stripped paint look is the in thing.



Great vibe, great cars, great meet.

City Ride

Yesterday my mate Andrew and I went for a ride around the city to take some snaps of our bikes, Andrew had already found this awesome location in Glebe, it's the old Tram sheds that has been abandoned for years and a haven for graffiti and other shady activities.



The bike was lit with a single Sigma Flash fired via radio trigger, as we were riding we had to carry the bare minimum of gear but I think the result came out pretty good.

I couldn't make up my mind if I like the colour or Black and White combo more...

Italian Stallions.

Hitting the Shelves today is the April Issue of MOTOR, I was lucky enough to shoot the Ferrari California and Ducati 1198S, both epitome's of Italian Design.


The shoot was hindered by bad weather but we had to make do with the time we had with the car and Bike, using the magic arm and a superclamp I was able to get a cool bike to car shot of the two going down a tree lined alley.


I used a Monotone processed look to the shots to further emphasise the vehicles, in print it does look rather spectacular.


Here also, are two buildups that show the flexibility of the 5dmk2 files, below are straight off the camera, and then pulled to expose for the parts of the car correctly. With a slight noise cleanup the images are totally transformed.


I process each file for each part of the car, then merge later in Post, I also tried a few lightining techniques that turned out rather cool. Just simple touches you wouldn't know existed unless told.

Spotted - Speedhunters

Dale's S15 made Speedhunters, well deserved!

Evo IX

I shot Georges car some time ago and only got around to finishing up the processing yesterday, this is the same car that was used for the JDMST calendar I wrote about in a previous post.

Georges car runs a 300+awkw forged Cosworth motor running on E85 Ethanol fuel, not only is it a high performer, it also looks amazing with Advan RS rims and full custom interior. George is another owner that makes taking photos of peoples pride and joy enjoyable, his laid back attitude and freedom for me to try new things was refreshing.


Once again I went with the Fluoro ballast setup powered by a 2 stroke Petrol generator to power the light. The method of painting the car went a bit further than normal this time as I painted the background a bit for this shoot to light up interesting parts of the image that would be hidden if using natural light.


The Interior shot was Georges idea, I think it came out quite well. For this shot I used a long exposure but combined with Off Camera flash I was able to “freeze” the inside of the car and maintain a sense of motion outside the car.

My post processing is evolving a bit more now, I am starting to get a bit more consistency between my images which is something I needed to work on. Having obtained a cool new brush set and some high pass overlaying techniques it brings a gritty look to the images that is quite appealing when applied to the right car and background.

MYS15 Wallpaper

For no good reason at all, here is a 1680 x 1050 res wallpaper of Dales "MYS15" 200sx.

New Wheels!

Usually I spend my weekend riding dirtbikes but yesterday I picked up a new set of wheels, something not motorised and to have some fun on while it’s too wet to ride the Husky.

It’s a 2009 Eastern Night Train, it’s a street/Park/dirt jumping orientated bike with an ultra short frame geometry and feather light weight. It’s single speed so essentially it’s like a big wheeled BMX bike with a bit more functionality.

The specs sheet is quite impressive, Rock Shox Argyle’s, Avid Hydraulics and Eastern’s bulletproof 3 piece crank set up make for a sweet ride, I haven’t ridden a bicycle in a few years but after a quick squirt around the shop it all came back to me pretty quick and I was bunnyhopping and manualing on the rear wheel like I was a kid again.

As always, I can’t buy something and just leave it alone and the bike is no exception, I’m already browsing around for lighter tyres/tubes, removing the front brake and replacing the narrow bar setup with some downhill bars with a lot more rise to help bridge the gap between dirtbike and bicycle. Then in due time strip and paint the whole thing matt black and new trick rims.

Should be a bit of fun, or a broken bone or two waiting to happen.