Pick Ten: 2013 Night of Fire

Here's a few of my favourite shots from last nights Night of Fire event at the Perth Motorplex.

Antony Begley has been driving Nitro Funny cars lately, but is back in this Alcohol powered FC for the rest of our local season.

1/2500s @ f/6.3, 400 mm

Clive Hudson has recently made a return to the Motorplex quarter mile, and is returning to his trademark big burnouts.

1/800s @ f/3.2, 70 mm

Marty Mirco took out the win in Super Sedan in his awesome Camaro.

1/400s @ f/2.8, 100 mm

Nigel Benson was back in the Aussie Bandit wheelstander and flamethrower.

1/4000s @ f/2.8, 108 mm

Clint Urban took a win in Mod Bike on his Suzuki GSX-R.

1/250s @ f/3.2, 140 mm

South African born Pieter DeWit, now living here in Perth, was driving the Gravity Storm Jet Dragster, and after 2 successful passes, Pieter had a chute failure in the final round, sending him into the sand trap.  More details can be found on the Motorplex website

1/320s @ f/3.2, 200 mm

Chuck Haynes piloting the other jet dragster, Volcano.

1/250s @ f/3.5, 130 mm

Andrew Katavatis took out yet another Super Comp win, taking him to four wins in a row.

1/160s @ f/3.2, 100 mm

Rob Pilkington took home a win in the Top Comp 'A' final.

1/160s @ f/4, 50 mm

Neil Anderson held out Daniel Natalotto in a heads up Comp Bike final.

1/160s @ f/4, 47 mm

Pick Ten: Perth Motorplex 2012 Season Opener

The Perth Motorplex's 2012/13 Drag Racing season kicked off in style on the 27th of October. Here are a selection of 10 of my favourite photos from the night.

Pick Ten: Perth Motorplex Pre-Season Test and Tune

This season's pre-season Test and Tunes at the Perth Motorplex were scheduled as a Saturday - Sunday affair, however rain over the course of the weekend ended up giving us a much reduced session, with Saturday cancelled and Sunday shortened by a couple of hours.

Here are 10 of my favourite shots of the day, in chronological order.



Rhiannon Allison was licensing in her dads dragster. At this stage, Craig will be back in the car for the regular season, but this is definitely not the last time we'll see Rhiannon in a race car.



The name Pete Veersma is well known to Western Australian drag racers, Pete made a return to the sport last season to help out Jeff Clarke in his final season, and is now running a car for his son, Luke Veersma.





Another car from the Hort racing stable, I believe this is Ethan's girlfriend Jayme behind the wheel of the teams third car.



Sam Treasure had a very busy couple of weeks getting the Cleveland Express back together with a new motor. The work paid off when the team ran their first ever 7 second pass on their first full track pass with the combo.





Kyle Putland has a new car this season, and had brought a tuner from the USA to help out for the weekend. In his first hit out with the new AMA deal, Kyle ran under the national record with a 6.85 second pass.



Simon 'Gonzo' Travaglini was out testing 'BA Baracus' and laid down a 6.44 second pass during the afternoon. With a previous best of 6.41 seconds, Gonzo was happy with the way the track and car performed in testing.



Supercharged Outlaw racer Ian Foster has a new Funny Car on track.



Mosman Park racers the Champan Brothers have a new Saratoga Doorslammer on track this season. This will also be a car to watch this season.

Motorvation 26 - Photo Blog

This January, I covered Motorvation 26 for Perth Street Car Magazine, along with editor Trevor Pickett and photographer and writer Jordan Leist. This is a small sample of some of the photos I took over the weekend.

Jeff Clarke had a number of cars on display and out on track over the weekend.

Chuck Haynes spent the summer in Australia and brought the Jet Dragsters to Motorvation.

Everyone loves the supercruise.

Some of the crowd trackside.

Russell Woods debuted his VL Commodore burnout car, 'Rollin', at Motorvation.

Cruzin' Magazines Gavin Kelso was head judge for this years Miss Motorvation.

Earl Salter won the blown category of the burnout competition in 'Feral'.

This beautiful Cadillac has a road racing history.

Jordan working the crowd.

WA's burnout crowds are pretty vocal.

More classic American iron on the supercruise.

'Blownwgn' gets the flames out at both ends.

Michael Butlers 'Hollyhood' on the supercruise.

More ReplayXD Videos

Over the last couple of weeks, I've done a bit more experimentation with the ReplayXD 1080 and the Camzilla mount. I've put it on a few mates cars while they've been out having some fun, and I've set it up as a fixed camera and made a time lapse video as well.


This first video was the first time I fitted the camera to the outside of a car competing in a motorsport event. This is Franz Esterbauer's Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 8 MR, and he's competing in the first round of the McRae Motorsports Twilight Rallysprint Series, held at the Perth Motorplex. Franz has always done pretty well at these events, and this run was no exception, Franz's quickest run of the night, it was also good enough to help him win the event. The experimentation side of things, saw me running the camera with an exposed microphone opening, which I have since realised was not such a good idea, and as a result, I've had to overdub this video with some music to hide the deathly silence left behind after I muted the sound from the ReplayXD the instant Franz leaves the start line. If you want an idea of how bad the wind noise was, watch the video to the very end, as I left the original audio intact as Franz drives off from the stop control.


The next video we have today is from Gerrin Good's 'TYAFRYA' burnout car. TYAFRYA is a methanol fueled Ford XE Falcon, and Gerrin's certainly not afraid to swing the big ol' girl around on the burnout pad. For this video, I had covered the microphone opening with a small sticker, supplied by ReplayXD with the camera for that purpose, I also turned down the microphone gain to 25db to see if that helped. As you will pick up while watching the video, there are still some noise issues with this setup, either wind noise or the sticker vibrating.


For the next attempt, I replaced the flimsy sticker with some good old race tape and fixed the ReplayXD 1080 to the side of Nathan Hollis' "TANK" burnout Sigma. This is where I'd wanted to put the camera on Gerrin's car too, as you get a good view of the drivers hands during the burnout (and while that looked good on Franz's car, it works even better on a burnout car), however, TYAFRYA has stickers on the rear windows, and that causes some issues with the suction cups on the Camzilla clamp. As you will notice in the video, there's still some wind noise or vibration issues, but they seem to be getting a bit better.


The final clip for this blog post, is a time lapse video that I shot with the ReplayXD 1080 and Camzilla rig at the Perth Motorplex's December 2011 round of the Australian Top Fuel Championship. I mounted the camera to the glass inside race control, and set the ReplayXD to shoot 1 shot every 3 seconds. The camera managed to fill it's 4 gigabyte card in around 2.5 hours, and I resized, cropped and compiled the results into the video above.

Cars and Guitars

Well, that was a very busy, and rather enjoyable, weekend. The Easter long weekend coincided with ANZAC Day in Australia this year, seeing two of the regular end of season events at the Perth Motorplex on the same weekend, the Hankook Tyres Burnout King on Good Friday and the Holden vs Ford drags on ANZAC Day. Between those two events, the Motorplex hosted a concert on Easter Saturday, headlined by ZZ Top and Rose Tattoo with support from local acts Datura and The Joy Evelation.



The Holden vs Ford and Burnout King events are pretty much a regular feature on my calendar these days, but the opportunity to see one of my favourite bands in action at one of my favourite venues was what had my attention over the weekend. I'd been in discussions to organise media accreditation for myself for some time, and finally got the good word on Saturday morning. Having not shot a lot of concerts before, this was always going to be a challenge, and something that I was really looking forward to.



This was the first time I'd experienced 'the pit', that part of the venue between the stage and the crowd, a little over a meter wide, where the accredited photographers can find some space to work. Many acts choose to limit the time that the pit is open to photographers to a couple of songs, and this concert was no exception. While this may seem to restrict us a little, I think it also helps, as in the case of ZZ Top, Billy Gibbons seemed to be paying attention to the shooters in the pit during those couple of songs, and there are definitely a couple of keepers in my shots from that time.



After the time in the pit was over, I headed back into the crowd to hang out with Kate, and switched to a longer lens to grab some more shots, mostly with two, or all three, members of ZZ Top in the frame. Another part of the challenge in shooting concerts, is that almost 100% of the time, flash photography is banned, meaning you're relying on constantly varying stage lighting, which can be good and bad, sometimes at the same time. While there are often some cool colour effects, you're always chasing the right exposure settings, and when you get it right, there's certainly a sense of achievement to go with it.



On the subject of gear, I shot the whole night with my Canon EOS 1D Mk III, using a Canon 24-105 f/4.0L IS lens for most of the night, and switching to a Canon 70-200 f/2.8L (non-IS) lens for the latter portion of ZZ Top's set.



I don't think I ever doubted that I'd enjoy shooting my first concert, and it's certainly something I'll be keeping an eye out for the opportunity to do it again some day, hopefully sooner rather than later.

2010 Western Hot Rod Rumble

Sunday, October 24th, saw the first running of a new event at the Perth Motorplex, the Western Hot Rod Rumble. This event differs from other previous Nostalgia and Retro themed events in that it was exclusively for pre-1966 vehicles. Other events in the past have accepted entries from vehicles up to the early 1980's in order to fill the staging lanes. With the new cut off for vehicles, entries were down overall, but entries of hot rods appeared to be up on previous events.



In addition to the 35 cars entered for racing for the day, at least another 50 eligible cars were parked in the pits, along with numerous classic cars that were within a couple of years of meeting the pre-1966 cut off for racing. During the break between qualifying and eliminations, all the steel bumpered cars in the pits were invited out for a cruise along the return road and back down the Motorplex drag strip, regardless of whether they met the year cut off to race.



The Western Hot Rod Rumble was a really cool, laid back event, and one that I would love to see continue in a similar fashion for years to come. While it didn't have the huge entry numbers of some other events at the Perth Motorplex, the atmosphere around the place was one that could not be ignored.



I am still sorting my photos from the day, but in the meantime, you can find a preview gallery of some of my photos from the Western Hot Rod Rumble over at LandBarge.com.

Update: I've now finished sorting the full gallery of photos, and uploaded it here.