The Race

The British Touring Car Championship came to Thruxton racetrack in Hampshire on the last weekend in April, with 3 rounds of racing on the Sunday. Before the racing got underway a pit lane walkabout was the order of the day, with all of the drivers signing autographs. Knowing about as much about Touring Cars as most people do, I was glad to spot a few faces I knew. Jason Plato has long been a favourite of mine and this was his first appearance of the season.



Despite having announced their forthcoming withdrawal from the BTCC, VX Racing proved firm favourites with many people, and in the first round of racing secured 1-2-3 on the podium, with reigning champion Fabrizio Giovanardi leading team mates Matt Neal and Andrew Jordan home in style.



Crowds at Thruxton seem to be pretty fluid but we found our spot in good time, and had a great base from which to enjoy the racing. Spectators are not allowed access to approximately 60% of the circuit, so naturally the crowds gather at certain points. The Complex (comprising the corners Campbell Cobb and Seagrave) was our viewpoint, and provided plenty of action as the drivers slow from around 125mph to around 55mph to negotiate the circuit. Above we see Fabrizio Giovanardi negotiating The Complex in the lead and in style. Below, a common occurrence during the day - this time its Martyn Bell pushing things to the limit.





Moving slightly further through The Complex gave an alternate angle as the cars scream around the track. Quite often the shorter wheelbase cars clipped a curb here and went onto two wheels. Tom Chilton was a particular expert at that.



The power and sounds of these cars and the skill of the drivers has to be seen to be believed, and BTCC at Thruxton is an amazing day out for anyone interested in Motorsport. Having never taken pictures of motorsport of any type before I was delighted to get some decent images. I hope you can see in the pictures something of the story of the day.

See more of my work at www.robincaddy.co.uk

Trading Air

Southampton has a long and proud association with the sea. Known around the world as the home of the finest cruise ships and ocean-going liners, the Port of Southampton is also one of Europe's largest commercial ports. A familiar site to locals, a great many ships come and go with their cargo in containers. These containers are stored in yards within the Docks; some empty, others with their cargo still inside. Each container is nine and a half feet high and forty feet long, and it is common to see them stacked as many as six high, in long impressive rows.



When confronted with such a mass of containers the mind starts racing to come up with some way of translating such obvious potential into pleasing pictures. The containers are lined up almost like terraced houses in some northern street, often with dark forbidding alleyways between the rows. Trying to find a composition that showed this aspect of the yard is something that escaped me, and is still rattling around my head looking for a solution. (Height may be the answer, stacked nearly 60 feet high a ground-level shooting position may be the cause of this problem)



Eventually I decided to concentrate on shapes, patterns and colours, to try and reduce the enormity of the scale of the yard to something more easily digested. Some close-up views accentuated the sameness to the view, others highlighted the subtle differences from container to container. The detail shots here represent some of the ideas I felt worked best. Another trip to the Docks might give me further room to explore the best ways to present this subject. As the light levels dropped, and after my excellent photographer friend Steve had finished an especially enjoyable shoot of his car within the Docks, I asked him to adopt the position, and trained an SB28 on him and an SB28 on the containers some 20 metres away (both triggered by Steve's Pocket Wizards, the backlight had full CTO gel, the light on Steve had 1/2 CTO gel). Steve specifically wanted the logo in the background to be prominent, which works well. There's also a lot of potential to de-focus the background here and use the suggestion of shapes, textures and colours in a more subtle way. Expect to see more shots from this opportunity-filled environment.

In Bloom

Spring is a time of new-birth and returning colour to the land around us. The symbolism of new beginnings can often give new inspiration for approaches and techniques. Before the daffodils and tulips of March come the crocuses of February.

I headed out on an epic photographic journey to my back garden. Quite a trek as you can imagine. A small clutch of crocuses were in an area of shade on a bright day, and I decided to make some close ups of them. I used two different lenses (a 100mm macro lens and a 50mm) with and without extensions tubes. The first picture is a useful way of setting the scene.

The way that extension tubes work is both their joy and their sorrow. In my case they have no electrical link to the camera body thus I had no control over aperture selection. You do end up working very close in to your subject, mere centimeters away. This closeness and magnification allows us to see details we wouldn't usually be able to see with the naked eye, but also means that the area of the subject that stays in focus is tiny. In the example below literally millimeters.

Focusing can be a hit and miss affair but to see something so exquisitely beautiful so close up opens up a new world. I deliberately left the composition to reveal to us what the subject was. It is clearly a plant, and a view we have seen before, but not often in such proximity.

I think it works on many levels, and a more abstract approach coupled with such limited depth of field would have presented too much of a mystery. Whereas I hope this picture reveals a little more of the splendour of the humble crocus.