Search...

Wednesday 15 September 2010

bugging the drift slag!

Well, RIP golf, we'll miss you, but you've gone to a better home... Welcome, Skippy the Bush Bug!! what a classic, '69 WV beetle imported from Australia, shes awesome!! Needless to say getting her in such good condition was an absolute mission! we've been looking for a car for about a month, Tom had his heart set on a Beetle, so ebaying it up, we went to look at a couple, There was a black one in Manchester that, by the photos, looked in good condition, the description was good also, so we went to have a look one evening... They guy was abit of a knob really, said the car was running not long ago and the car had been moved... so what was with the 2 inch thick layer of moss underneath and gaping big hole in the floor on the passenger side... yeah, so that didn't happen, after a while we were starting to loose hope. Then Skippy came along on ebay, the guy was looking for about a grand for her, which was our budget.. lovely... so, we phoned him up and asked, if we drove from Wrexham to London to look at the car would he accept £1000 there and then? he said yes. So me, Tom and Paul drove to Swindon,(to drop off the car we were borrowing) where Toms dad drove us to London, we got there, brand new 1300 engine, really good nick, hardly any rust, (just the right amount though to make the car look nice and rustic.. old school!!) the bottom was fine, and the car ran... but this geezer decided he wasn't going to take the £1000 for it and wait for ebay to finish... needless to say we weren't happy, so we drove back to Swindon to think about what to do... Then, said geezer decided to let us have it for £1600, so off we go again, arrive in London at 11pm and pick the car up, only to drive it back to Wrexham at a maximum of 50mph all the way!! No problems with her at all, and touch wood, she hasn't let us down yet!! What an awesome car! We got back at 5am.

And introducing Pauls car, Drifto Slago... she lives up to her name, that car goes sideways... really sideways... alot!! We done a photo shoot at night just for the fun of it, with some lighting techniques, inspired by the guys... this is what we came up with! The only problems was finding somewhere with no light whatsoever in order to make more of an impact, and a little help from Photoshop...!

For this shoot I used standard Tripod, Standard lens and Canon digital SLR 1000D, 2 torches and 2 people running around like fools!

These 1st photos were done in the cash and carry car park, very limited lighting and out the way of roads, we just finished doing these, then lights came on and we had to move to another location.





Here are the ones we did at the side of the road. It was completely dark, yet sometimes a little bit of light did manage to get through, we also had the problem of passing cars, but these were few and far between leaving us able to work efficiently. The camera was left on long exposure for a maximum of 5 seconds, and a minimum of 1.5 seconds, varying between the 2 for each image.


The above was a failed attempt where Tom got too close to the car in the 1st 2 seconds of the open shutter!




These are the better photos I took with a portrait view, and decided to concentrate more on blacking out the backgrounds via Photoshop!

Final Drifto Slago;




and final Skippy;






With the torches we were trying very hard to get the line of the vehicles as they're very distinctive... we ended up with some very interesting shapes, I'm very happy with the end results!!

Ten Of The Best











This was a car show that Tom got asked to go cover... We traveled to york with a couple of mates. I was asked to come with so I could take some photos of cars for Polybush, I got told if I made an impact there could be a possibility of me getting commissioned work in the future, so i jumped at the chance. We went early in the morning on the Saturday, it took a good couple of hours to get there, and when we did we were slightly dissapointed, we thought it would be alot busier, turns out that the main day to go on was the Sunday, nobody told us, so we had to make do with what was there!! Still, it was pretty impressive and we had a great day out! As soon as we got back home I was on Photoshop editing the images and lifting the contrast, (on some photos maybe too much) and sent them off straight away to Hayley at Polybush. Here's some that I came out with...





The main events happening was the drag strip, a quarter mile, where people were trying their cars out on their own for the next day, or just racing with other cars that where there.


Heres a few I took from just walking around the event,







With the colour image I tried out some photoshopping, and got rid of everything distracting in the background, the blue tent is missing and a slight disturbance on the left hand side f the picture aswell, both of which you can see in the black and white picture of the same car taken at the same time! I'm currently looking at Photoshop tutorials in order to improve my editing skills!


Then there was the handling course. This was going to be tricky for the drivers as it had been raining for half an hour previous to them opening up the course.. The main car that had an impact on this run was the RX7, a rear wheel drive car which drifts nicely on wet tarmac. For these shots I used my 300mm Sigma lens, and I was stood in the stands 50 yards away from the front line.





So there's a narrowed down selection of photos sent to Polybush, I've been having ideas of contacting the event organisers and seeing of they want to use any for future promotions. We'll see!!

Ah, back at last!!

Unfortunatly due to orange and bt being the difficult buggers they are, I've been offline for over 2 weeks, this has put a major halt on my professional development... so, I've got loads to put up and evaluate, ready?

im going to start with excuses as to why my mind hasn't been directly on my third year, like it should've, theres just been so much going on!! we've been looking for a new house to live in, we had to leave the flat, (yeah, really bad times) we were going to go move to Swindon for the holidays and find somewhere to live up here, I had a job lined up and everything! However, Tom managed to get a job alot sooner than we expected and had to stay in Wrexham... with no house!! Thank fuck for our mate Paul... what a life saver, he put us up in his place and were all looking for a new house together!! After a few hits and misses, we found the perfect house in Ruabon... fingers crossed!! Toms job is going really well, he's really fitted into it well, early mornings and early nights however is an entire new concept to me, one I'm struggling to come to terms with, but he's been to a few shows across Britain already and has really made an impact on the company... if you need Polyurethane suspension bush mounts for your car... go to Polybush and ask for Tom aka, Bodders! ;)

Since hes been all over the place I've been going home alot, I've missed my mates alot recently, andI've found that everybody seems to be taking completely different directions in life... so its about time I made my own way aswell!

I've got a job, okay, not many hours but I'm keeping positive... Halfords... I'm trying to get trained up so I'm not just a till bitch and learning more about cars and bikes and all that jazz! Toms impressed... I get a discount card soon!

So when it comes to Photography, I havn't been able to get any commission based work... I'm starting to get worried, I need to sort something out, I've got lots of research, but I don't know what I want to do for my dissertation either... Shit, I should've written my proposal by now!! Wheres my tutor when I need him?

Glyndwr really is a naff uni... I don't want to talk bad about it... but it really is... The entire institute is completely corrupt, moneywise, they don't bother well with British students, instead concentrating more on the foreign students... this wouldn't be so bad if they were doing it out of the kindness of their own hearts, instead, they're looking at money... foreign students pay a hell of alot more than british... soo it's nice to see where glyndwrs morals stand!!! There are many other issues aswell, but I'll save them... for a more worthwhile cause!!

right... so Photography... I remember!!!