Top End Tales

Flying Dutchman....

2008-07-10T10:54:00.001-07:00

Hi Gang,
Well its been a while and I can only apologise for that, a combination of ill health for me and holidays for the techy bods behind the site have somewhat delayed the Summer Nationals update, but its here at last! I hope you will agree its been worth waitng for, particularly the full motordrive sequence of Dutchman Mathijs Kraetzer attempting to launch his Super Pro Altered into low earth orbit...

Cheers
Sharky

Wild One...

2008-05-29T13:03:00.000-07:00

Hi Gang,
The Main Event has been and gone and what do you know? I managed to last nearly the whole weekend! Admittedly I gave up and went home at lunchtime on Monday but that turned out to be a good decision As the rain that had wiped out all of Sunday returned after the first round of Pro Mod on Monday morning and didn't let up for the rest of the day, leaving the meeting a rain out.

Thankfully at least Friday and Saturday were dry so some qualifying took place and I was delighted to last both Pro qualifiers on Saturday before having to go and rest, looks like things are looking up! Not only was it a wild one weather wise there were also some wild moments on track as Danny Cockerill shows....

Spring Speed

2008-05-19T05:37:00.000-07:00

Hi Gang,
As mentioned previously the Spring Speed Festival wasn't the best for me health wise, but on the plus side the day I was there was the day they managed the most running! About 100 images from that meeting are now online. Next up for me is the Main Event at Santa Pod over the May Bank Holiday weekend. Hopefully I will managed to pace myself better than I did at Shakey and manage to last more than one day. As long as I can get trackside for the Pro Mod sessions I will consider the weekend a success!

Havoc!

2008-05-12T05:30:00.000-07:00

One of my images has been accepted into the Canon Assignment competition (That shot of Havoc, what else?) and should you wish to, you can support me by voting for my image by going to http://ta.canon-europe.com/?pg=gallery&cc=gb&lc=en&photo_id=foto480f7db8e37ce.

Cheers
Sharky

Big Bang Photos

2008-05-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

Hi folks, I did make it to Shakey County last weekend for the Springspeed festival, but unfortunately only managed about 3 hours on Saturday before I started feeling ill so not a huge number of pictures from that. They are still being processed at the moment, however the big bang photos are now available on the site.
It certainly was a Big Bang for VW Pro Racer Glynn Morgan...

Cheers
Sharky

Big Bang

2008-04-27T03:11:00.000-07:00

Howdy folks, I have actually got to do some photography this weekend! With yesterday being such a glorious day I decided on a trip to Big Bang up at Santa Pod, primarily to have a play with the 40D and to support the returning Havoc team and to see my mate Derek Flynn start his top fuel career. Sadly a broken fuel pump ended Havoc's return on the first burnout and Derek never even made it to the track (see Eurodragster for the story there).

There was still plenty of action with 3 VW classes, Junior Dragster, 9.50 Bike, Outlaw Anglia, Sportsman ET, Street Eliminator and Super Mod all qualifying in the gathering dusk from 6pm - 9pm and some of the guys choseing to use the day time rwyb to test as well. I came home with just over 200 frames which hopefully will be on the site within a week. Watch this space....

Quiet Week...

2008-04-18T04:44:00.000-07:00

Bit of a quiet week on the photography front this week unfortunately. My trusty desktop PC died last weekend after 4 years so most of my time has been spent trying to save that and then when it became clear it had had it trying to rescue as many files as possible off it.

A nice new Dell from Euro PC is on order and should be here early next week, just in time to be set up ready to process any pictures I get at Big Bang next weekend. I did toy with the idea of going up to Shakey for the test and tune this weekend but the weather forecast combined with a bit of a flair up with the ME has put paid to that and also to the thoughts of going to Donnington for the historic race series there.

Should finally get to use the 40D in anger next week as Friday I am off to the Bird of Prey centre at Shuttleworth for a half day's owl flying and then Saturday and Sunday I intend to pop up to Santa Pod for a couple of hours at Big Bang.

Cheers
Sharky

New Toys!

2008-04-10T15:03:00.000-07:00

I had a little accident whilst browsing the Calumet web site. A Canon 40D jumped in my shopping basket and before I knew it it was ordered and arrived the very next day. Still, 10 megapixel Digic 111 sensor, 6.5 frames a second with a double figure buffer for raw files and built in sensor cleaning for £620 body only and then a £100 cash back from Canon as well means it works out cheaper than the new 450D which can't be bad.

This will make a very nice 2nd body to accompany my 1dmk3 as it takes the EF-S 10-22mm wide angle which the 1Dmk3 doesn't. With Big Bang coming up at the end of April and then Spring Speed at Shakey the week after I will hopefully get to both meetings for a couple of hours or more to get to know the new camera.

Cheers
Sharky

Back from Hibernation...

2008-04-02T06:40:00.000-07:00

Yes, its true! Afetr more than a year with no new photo galleries, I have at last been able to update Topendtales with a new gallery! I was only track side for a total of about 3 hours over two days at the Thunderball and between that and a new, stricter editting process the number of images is only about 90, but its a start. Hopefully each meeting will see me manage a little longer at track side so the number of images will go up as the year goes on.

Cheers
Sharky

Signs of Life!

2008-03-31T14:31:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. Most of you will know me from the UK drag racing scene and will have come here via the link on my http://www.topendtales.com/ site. For those that have stumbled across this from elsewhere, I am a UK based Drag Racing photographer, previously working with http://www.eurodragster.com/ and now freelance.

Well its been over a year since I was able to really do any photography or internet stuff thanks to suffering from ME / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. A year down the line I am better than I was and am now able to at least get out and about a little bit and do some work with the camera.

So now I had some images to publish again (not many as I am only able to be at the track for a couple of hours, but its a start). That left me with a bit of a problem, unfortunately during my "year out" I had lost the free web hosting I have enjoyed for the last 5 years and although the site was still live I had no way of updating it!

Thankfully during my time off I was working with some good friends on another web project which has just seen the launch of the dedicated drag racing image library http://www.superchargedimages.com/ and off the back of that project we were able to rebuild and re-engineer topendtales so it could live again!

As the site was weighing in at 2gig in size, finding hosting for it that wasn't going to cost the earth was proving very difficult so All the old galleries have had to go for the time being. Hopefully at least some of them will be restored soon.

There is no particular plan for the blog, it will be a mixture of thoughts on the racing, some photography stuff and maybe even the odd medical update!

Cheers
Sharky