This was one of those right place, right time moments for what was one of the biggest crashes in V8 Supercars history. Firstly Steve and Karl are relatively ok, Karl has burns to his hands that need some attention. More on that here.
I had been getting a couple of shots on the grid and once the cars started their warm up lap I quickly ran around the back of the pits and jumped up in the grandstand to get some shots of the start. Still had it in manual mode from the grid and just had a second to set my levels and the race started, initially shooting the leaders as they launched and then seconds later felt this huge hit of heat on the side of my face, looked to my right and this was the first shot I got off;
Just kept smashing the shutter button without even checking levels, they were slightly under exposed but I think that actually worked out better for most of them considering the light coming from the fire ball. You can see the twirl of air as the heat of the explosion headed upwards.
I didn’t see Steve get out of his car, but he got out first. Karl took some time getting out which left everyone holding their breath.
Crews from all over the place jumped the pit wall and started attacking the fire with any extinguishes they could get their hands on.
The fire itself was out pretty quick, first shot 10:39:24, last shot was 10:39:58.
What I love about this video is not only that Joel actually managed to pull it off and build a V8 Supercar powered skateboard, but this was shot on a Canon 5D and it looks superb!
The amount of times I’ve found myself in a shopping centre browsing for products thinking to myself, why can’t they just build an online app for this? It would make it so much easier to find what I want. A fridge is the perfect example. Why doesn’t fridge shops have an online app where I can plug in my dimensions, select what I want, then just show me what fits.
Being a programmer makes this extra frustrating because it really quite a simple thing to build if you have the content. The content is easy to, that’s just however many hours for a temp to plug it all in.
Then you come across a site like lenshero.com. Ahhh, now THAT’s how you do it! Easy.
If you want to buy a lens, tell the site what camera you have, what lens you want, or what you already own, and they show you the results. Simple. Love it!
This was a fantastic event in the V8 Supercar calendar, the racing was great and the off track entertainment was also awesome. The Townsville track is not your usual street circuit, not only you can see so much of the track from so many different angles and locations, but it encourages great racing as well. Each corner has a unique an setup to produce strong competitive driving.
iRacing is probably the closest thing that I can find to actually re-living the racing days and is certainly a heap cheaper. It’s also the only place a four year old can race an IndyCar! I shot this while my son Lachlan had his very first iRacing experience and not really too surprisingly, he wasn’t half bad at it considering he’s already been playing rFactor and Live for Speed.
This also shows our triple screen Matrox setup with a Logitech G25. The three screens give a peripheral view of the car which is fantastic when overtaking, or being overtaken, certainly leads to less contact.
Camping recently in the Barrington Tops in NSW, looking up at night you tend to see a fair few more stars then in the ol’ big smoke.
This one I exposed for a little over ten minutes, but what’s great about living in the southern hemisphere is we get a far better view of the Milky Way then the folks up north.
My wife recently bought her dream car, a nice 2005 Toyota Prado. Great car, low kms and amazingly had never ever been off road! Poor car, never experiencing the dirt it was built for.
So only a few weeks after it had joined it’s new owners, we took it camping in the Barrington Top in NSW, where there just happened to be a mountain to climb.
I got this shot from the top, where funnily enough there is an old caravan that someone dragged up there.
I made sure I got the light levels right for the sky so that I could get in the sky and clouds and then after a bit of low level light adjustments and a bit of vignetting this is what we came out with.
