Photography blog
The August issue of Irish Bike Newspaper is now in the Shops. Whilst down at Kirkistown for the July round of the Irish Superbike championship Races I bumped in to Mark Hamilton the Editor and he asked me to supply him with a few images from the racing as his regular ‘togs’ were absent. I was more than happy to assist Mark despite him being an Evertonian!
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.
The scheduled Saturday practice session for the 2010 Walderstown Road races was pretty much wiped out due to persistent heavy Rain, thankfully I had not planned on attending practice and by the time Sunday morning dawned the Sky was already looking much clearer.
The old pensioner (Derek Wilson) was again my travelling companion which meant that I’d have to buy my own food or starve as Derek is a Scots Man and they don’t like putting their hands in their pockets too often. We travelled down together with me doing the driving and approximately Two hours later arrived at our destination to be met with a Dry circuit, and clear skies. We made the same journey last year but unfortunately Andrew Neill was to lose his life in a crash and we soon had to return home, but there was no repeat this year (just one Red flag incident) with some great racing.
With Ryan Farquhar away competing at Scarborough (and dominating proceedings) the opportunity was there for someone else to grab a few wins and a slice of the healthy prize fund. The start / finish section of the circuit is the widest section of road and it needs to be with a mass start where a bunch of bikes all have to brake extremely hard at the first road end for the first corner. Here in the images John Burrows machine has the back-end stepping out under braking.
The Supersport race was led from the start by William Dunlop on the CD Racing R6 Yamaha and it looked like he would never be headed.
But half way through the race his brother Michael started to come on strong and was soon right on his back wheel. With a lap to go Michael made his move passing William in mid-air over the jump and managing to get the bike down, and slowed for the peel in point to the next left hander before going on to take the win.
The next event for me is the Irish Superbikes at Kirkistown on Tuesday and then off to Kells for more road racing at the weekend.
Earlier tonight saw the opening practice session for the 2010 North West 200 Road Races. With Roads scheduled to close around 5pm, and myself stuck in work at Antrim until 4:30pm, I made the decision not to attend as I would have been unable to make it up to the circuit, get myself signed on and the car parked up before the Roads closed. Instead I am venturing up on Thursday for the daytime practice session, which at this stage is looking a bit iffy with the Irish Weather!
The move to daytime practice is a great idea (despite it costing me one of my all too few days of annual leave from the day job) and its a move that the competing Teams are all in favour off. Hopefully the Weather won’t turn out to be as bad as is being predicted.
In this blog posting I displayed a Photograph of Ryan Farquhar’s new Kawasaki Superbike, which at that stage he hadn’t even ridden. Ryan got a few laps on the bike at a damp Kirkistown Race circuit yesterday morning before taking it out tonight for first practice for Saturday’s North West 200 races. Despite the lack of time on the bike Ryan managed to post a time that would leave him 6th quickest in a session headed by Honda’s Steve Plater and John McGuinness.
The evening’s practice/qualifying session for the North West 200 Race saw a lengthy delay due to an oil spillage when Gary Johnson’s engine blew up. Lets hope that Thursdays qualifying session sees no such delays and gives us some good light to capture some nice images for the various publications we represent.
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.
Today’s plan was to travel to Tim Martin’s House a few miles from Lisburn and assist the Team’s PR man (Stephen Henderson) to take some studio style Photographs of all the Team members against a White background for their Website, and then in the late afternoon/evening do a shoot of my own with one of the Team’s racers Kirk Jamison at Scrabo Tower near Newtownards.
The MAR-Train racing shoot went well and was all wrapped up within a couple of hours at which point Kirk told me the afternoon shoot wasn’t going ahead as his new Leather race suit wasn’t ready yet. That itself was disappointing, but to then later receive a text from Derek Wilson (who was returning from a days shooting at Kirkistown) informing of a nice sunset over Scrabo was very disappointing as we don’t get a lot of sunsets in Ireland!
Ah well you can’t win them all. Maybe I should start charging cancellation fees…
When I returned home I then travelled on to Dungannon to catch up with Ryan Farquhar and have some ‘craic’ with him discussing the upcoming racing season and how he was getting on at preparing his race bikes and his new race truck. We then went back to his house for a cuppa Tea and watched the World Superbike qualifying from Portimao.
With Kart racing on at Kirkistown, Motocross at Tinkerhill, Newry and the annual Bishopscourt Stages Car Rally I was a bit spoilt for choice this weekend for some Photographic action. I decided that I was sick of the Dust and Dirt all over my Camera and lenses from the Motocross and made the decision to shoot some ‘Tin Boxes’ at Bishopscourt.
With the first of the Six scheduled stages set to commence at 9am I had a severe bit of persuading to do to convince my auld pal Derek ‘Jock’ Wilson to get out of his Bed early. Apparently 7:30am(ish) is, to quote auld Jock, “the middle of the Night“. But with the offer of buying him some Brekkie (Jocks like nothing better than a freebie) he was soon convinced.
Having spectated at this stage Rally many many years ago I knew there was a jump on one of the Concrete sections of the stages and so we made a bee-line for it prior to the sweeper car coming round. Its a good job we went when we did cos it seemed like every Man, Woman and Child with a Camera had had the same idea and shooting space was at a premium due to more restrictive safety restrictions than previous years.
Andrew McCormick at the Bishopscourt stages Rally 2010
I slowed my shutter speed right down to 1/160th of a second to give a sense on motion to this image (below) of Desi Henry over the jump in his Ford Fiesta rally Car.
On the final stage before the Lunch interval the forecasted Sunshine finally put in a welcome, but all too brief appearance, but it stayed long enough to get some better light for this image of a tidy BMW.
Conor Lavery at the Bishopscourt stages Rally 2010
Auld Jock was nattering on in my Ear about how he wanted to capture an image of one of the Rally Cars casting up a cloud of ‘Stour’ but despite numerous attempts at various locations it didn’t quite happen for him. Mind you there was one prime opportunity for him when one Car slid wide and was headed straight for him, but like all Jocks rather than hold his ground he legged it. For such an Old Boy he has a fair turn of speed in those arthritic legs!
Jock me oul China, this next image is for you.
1/500th f6.3
1/800th f4
Stuart Biggerstaff
The day though belonged to Derek McGarrity. The Glengormley driver, in his state-of-the-art Subaru Impreza WRC S12B, dominated the Ballynahinch and District MC event to record the fastest time on all Six stages and win the rally over a minute.
An absolutely freezing day at Bishopscourt which turned out to be almost as Dusty on the Camera gear as the Motocross, and now back to the same venue next weekend for the first Motorbike racing action of the 2010 season in the Irish Clubmans championship.
As always you can purchase from a selection of my vast Photographic Library by selecting from my online galleries.
I have uploaded a selection of images to my online shop from four Irish Superbike championship race meetings; April at Bishopscourt and Kirkistown, July at Kirkistown and the October Mondello Masters meeting.
Following on from my ‘Best of 2009 – Candids’ and ‘Best of 2009 – Road racing’ blog posts, this post contains a selection of my favourite photographs from the Irish short circuit racing season just finished. Selecting your own personal favourites is never easy, and your choice varies each time you attempt it (well mine does anyway), but I’ve had a go at it and here they are (in no particular order).
Hot n heavy action as David Haire, BJ Toal and Ian Lowry battle for the same strip of Tarmac, the Grass and Dirt is thrown up in to the air from BJ’s Knee slider.
1/1000th f9 300mm f2.8 VR
Gerard Kinghan powers out of Dunlop corner at Mondello Park, front Wheel up in the air and the rear Tyre struggling to maintain its grip on the Tarmac as Gerard keeps the Throttle pinned.
1/1000th f5.6 300mm f2.8 VR
Glenn Irwin was just too eager to get on the power at turn two at Mondello Park and the power of the MAR-Train Suzuki was too much for a relatively cold Tyre at the start of the race. Before Glenn knew anything about it he was spat of the bike and looking for his landing spot.
1/1250th f8 300mm f2.8 VR
A nice slow shutter speed emphasises the sense of speed as Drew Jamison negotiates Debtors dip at Kirkistown.
1/160th f20 300mm f2.8 VR
Again a nice slow shutter speed and panning was used here to emphasise the sense of speed as Gary Johnson scrubs up some speed to enter Colonials at Kirkistown.
1/160th f14 300mm f2.8 VR
A 300mm lens and a 1.7x tele-convertor were called in to action for this tight shot of Wayne Kirwan at Bishopscourt.
1/800th f6.3 300mm f2.8 VR and TC17 tele convertor
Damien Mulleady, John Walsh, Robbie Lanigan and Ronan Shanahan in formation at Mondello Park.
1/800th f8 300mm f2.8 VR
Rubbing is racing! Marshall Neill makes contact with Ian Lowry during a cold, wet finale to the 2009 Irish Superbike championship at Bishopscourt. The contact was that heavy that Ian had to ’sit up’ and run wide on to the Grass to avoid crashing.
1/800th f7.1 300mm f2.8 VR
As always you can purchase from a selection of my vast Photographic Library by selecting from my online galleries.
As far as December days in Ireland go, Weather wise this was as pleasant as they come, heck the Sun even shone for a little while and the Rain stayed away all day, but true to form Kirkistown was “chilly on the willy“.
On arrival at the circuit I immediately saw that the low angle of the Sun which had long since departed for the Southern Hemisphere was going to be tricky for Photography as half of the circuit (the hairpin down to the start finish straight) was in shade thanks to the high Armco crash barriers on the paddock side casting long shadows across the damp and greasy Tarmac. But the Sun was out none the less and I was keen to capture a few frames.
A short Ten minute wait for Derek ‘Jock’ Wilson (why are Scots Men always so slow?) to appear and we were all geared up and ready to shoot.
1/500th f4 300mm
1/500th f3.5 300mm
1/100th f10 85mm
1/80th f10 85mm
1/640th f4 300mm
1/640th f3.2 300mm
As always you can click here to purchase photographs from my online shop. Photographs from today have not yet been uploaded. If you do not see a shot you are interested in within the online galleries then send me an email and a full description of the Kart and driver’s clothing etc as I might have an image in my library that I haven’t uploaded.
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