2019 started as most do, with Summernats car festival. Still to my astonishment I managed to unwittingly weasel my way into the StreetMachine crew to work it. It is still a nuts experience to look back on. Lots of firsts: First time working in a big media team. First time delivering photos immediately, first time enjoying shooting Dyno comp!! How could you not enjoy it with more than a couple of cars in excess of 2000hp turning the hub Dyno.
The next big event was VicDrift Summer Matsuri, I lugged my printer and framing stuff along with admittedly limited success but still having a good time getting back to what I started shooting almost 7 years ago.
UBC popped up next. Sooting burnouts in my own backyard was hard to pass up, and luckily, I didn’t! 2 massive fires from well-known burnout cars provided excellent photographic fodder. Taking perhaps my best photo of the year when “UNFAZD” Pushed rods out the bock in a spectacular fireball.
As usual a string of AWDCC events were sprinkled in, not as many as prior years as scheduling conflicts and other events overlapped. But none-the-less got to as many as I was able.
I also racked up a couple of AMRS events, one at Winton the another at The Bend, Solo driving the 8 hours there and back was an experience. Getting to shoot somewhere foreign was something else. What an extraordinary place it is, I hope to be back there some day in some capacity.
Shooting Concept Hair Design was different!
I did website photoshoots for Blacklocks Jaguar range rover and even scored a the 2020 Range Rover Evoke for the Queens Birthday long weekend.
It was a dream capturing Quinlan’s brand update, now live on their website, a truly independent family run auto parts business.
Mitta Rally for me was getting back on a horse that though my own mistakes almost killed me a year before. I’m glad to have gone back and done it!
One of my biggest accomplishments this year was running the first Border Battle for the first time. From the organisation with council, marketing, finding and dealing with sponsors all built up the biggest learning curve of my life. It took up 2 full months of this year and I’m still personally offended that the weather threw everything at us that day. But amazed so many people turned out to show off their cars and check out everyone else’s. On this year’s success we will build on this and come back stringer next year!
DRAG CHALLENGE! November seen one of the most arduous events that I have ever captured. Its one thing to turn up to the same place for 2-4 days capturing an event its something else to travel 6+ hours to the next track taking photos along the way. Sleep deprivation played a big part, I have never shot so many days in a row at different tracks in my life. It’s a true credit to the other media guys that had to edit video till 3am most nights then be at the track again at 7am the next morning. Sheer madness!!
Rounding out the year of burnouts and mayhem we went along to SpringNats, we’ve gone along some 4 years now, if not longer. Capturing it for StreetMachine for the past 3. It’s always interesting seeing how big events like this change, the vibe just seems very different to what it used to. Not sure how to explain this one. Perhaps I’m looking at events differently now. Still, plenty of photos to take and even more keepers from this once again.
Hot-rod Santa photos were a toe dip in the water of kid photography, selling out the couple of days we did has only got me more motivated to make it bigger next year. I have no doubt this will be a fixture on my calendar as long as we have space to do it.
This year we also shot 3 weddings, 2 of which were good friends of mine. The stress of doing weddings is truly incredible and rewarding at the same time and I was incredibly proud to be a part of all of them.
And last but not least is all the car shoots I did this year!
So here’s to 2020 and grabbing hold of that chainsaw we call life, often messy, never quite perfect. Loud as fuck but we have to keep carving out an existence that impacts others every year!