Posted by Cleggy on Jul 15, 2010 in
Bike Racing
On Tuesday it was the latest round of the Irish Superbike Championships at Kirkistown Race circuit in County Down. The Weather forecast was for prolonged Rain but luckily it did not arrive until after the racing had been and gone.
Kirkistown is a very small, flat circuit with very few corners which makes it hard not to continually repeat shots that you have captured many times before. With the recent clamp down on Health and Safety at race circuits (fat lot of good its doing with racers still getting killed and spectators still getting hurt) it is getting even harder to capture anything worthwhile at this circuit. But with by utilising large glass and a tele-convertor its still possible to shoot some action.
The dedicated Medical Team do a great job of quickly getting to the scene of an incident and attending to the injured racers, here they can be seen in action attending to Jason Cash who luckily was not badly hurt in this crash. This incident happened quite some distance away from me but a 300mm Nikon lens and 1.7 tele-convertor helped me to zoom in on the scene for an image that the Medical Team were appreciative of.
I was down to a shorter lens and a very slow shutter speed ( 1/80th sec ) to capture some panning images when Scott Lonsdale crashed in front of me, sadly the shutter speed for panning images wasn’t quite fast enough to capture this crash any sharper.
Kirk Jamison and Gerard Kinghan are just Two of the many friends I have made through racing and although they are rivals on track they are also good friends off it, here they are locked in battle at Kirkistown. Sadly Gerard crashed out shortly after this and broke his Collarbone.
But Portadown’s Marshall Neill had one win and a runner-up spot, he would have had Two wins only a commentators cock-up on the number of laps remaining meant that his pit crew displayed the wrong info to him on his signal board allowing David Haire to win the second Superbike race. But Marshall still has a very healthy lead in the championship fight.
Tags: County Down, David Haire, Gerard Kinghan, Irish Superbike Championship, Jason Cash, Kirk Jamison, Kirkistown, Marshall Neill, Medical Team, Nikon, panning, Scott Lonsdale
Posted by Cleggy on Apr 7, 2010 in
Bike Racing
The Irish championship short circuit racing action moved along the County Down Coast to the Kirkistown race circuit for the second round of the Irish Superbike Championships. The early on-track action was held in cold and wet conditions, but as the day progressed it got drier, and a heck of a lot windier and the Sun even put in an appearance.
I started off where I left off at Bishopscourt by using a slow shutter speed for some panning shots. With so many Motorhomes and other background distractions at race circuits these days, panning motion blur can be used to blur a distracting background.
Cameron Donald – 300mm 1/125th
Cameron Donald – 500mm 1/320th
There was some nice light late in the afternoon to shoot the second superbike race of the day, but a very strong sidewind made it very tricky to hold the Camera and lens (with teleconvertor) steady. To minimise the effect of the wind I used the sheltered side of some Tyres and grass banking, a monopod and a low position to help me capture this image of best friends Gerard Kinghan and Kirk Jamison battling it out wheel-to-wheel at Kirkistown’s hairpin.
Tags: Bishopscourt, Bruce Anstey, Cameron Donald, County Down, Gerard Kinghan, Irish Championship, Irish Superbike Championship, Kirk Jamison, Kirkistown, panning
Posted by Cleggy on Jan 30, 2010 in
Bike Racing,
PR
Another heavy overnight Frost meant a chilly start to the day as I set off for County Down to Photograph Alastair Seeley and his new Relentless Suzuki RMZ250 Motocross bike that he will be using for some Winter fitness training. With a clear Blue Sky and some sunshine I was hopeful of capturing some nice action images with my trusty Nikon’s.
Just as I sat down to write this Blog posting the Editor of Irish Racer Magazine contacted me to say “Keep those Seeley pics for the mag!” so I knew there and then that I wouldn’t be able to display a selection of the images on my Blog until after the magazine was published.
In the mean time here is one of the images from todays shoot that I did not submit to the magazine, having culled it during my submission selection process. I will do another Blog post at a later date with the selection of images that I submitted to the magazine.
Tags: Alastair Seeley, County Down, Irish Racer Magazine, Motocross, Nikon, Photograph, Suzuki RMZ250
Posted by Cleggy on Jan 1, 2010 in
Bike Racing Minus Five degrees celcius was the reading on the digital temperature gauge of my Car’s dash as I set off for Crossgar, in county Down, for the annual bike cross country meeting. Some of the ‘B’ roads were treacherous with lots of Ice everywhere (the Motorway and main roads were not much better!) but I got there in one piece.
I grabbed my Nikon 70-200 f2.8 lens, one Nikon body, and threw dumped my Nikon 20mm f2.8 in one pocket of my coat and an SB900 in the other pocket, laced up my Mountain Boots (boy was I glad I put on a second pair of Socks) and pulled on my Loweprowe Photographers Gloves.
I have never Photographed this event before so obviously I done the only thing a man of my ability could do and that was to visit the Chippy Van and get a Chicken Burger – well you wouldn’t expect me to work on an empty Stomach!
Despite the hard weather there was a good turn out of both competitors and spectators for this event. The fields were still frozen from the heavy overnight frost but even so the tough bikers fired up their Motocross and Enduro bikes to tackle the challenging circuit, and challenging it was with many of the competitors feeling the muscular pain from all the ruts in the ground and many were visibly gasping for breath.
World Superbike star Jonathan Rea used to race Motocross bikes before turning to the Tarmac and he was just one of the Tarmac boys to turn up on the day, using this event as some useful fitness training for his season ahead.
Nikon 70-200mm VR at f4
The amount of bikes lapping the circuit soon turned the more boggy sections in to a real quagmire which proved very tricky for some poor competitors who got stuck in the soft mud.
Nikon 70-200mm VR at f3.5
You can purchase photographs from this event by selecting from my online galleries, which will be uploaded soon.
Tags: County Down, Crossgar, Enduro, fitness training, Jonathon Rea, Loweprowe, Motocross, Nikon, Nikon 20mm f2.8, Nikon 70-200mm VR f2.8, Photographs, SB900, World Superbike