Cheltenham Festival.....Without The Horses

Every March Cheltenham Racecourse plays host to the Cheltenham Festival Meeting, the most prestigious meeting on the National Hunt racing calendar. Usually incorporating St Patricks day the festival attracts a large number of fans as well as many corporate visitors.

With its own dedicated heliport, many of the corporate guests choose to arrive by air and beat the surrounding traffic jams. With all this frenetic aerial activity packed into a few hours each day before the racing commences, it offers some good photographic opportunities.

As most fans headed into the racecourse I made an early start and headed up to the heliport in the hope of getting some ‘stock’ corporate helicopter shots. Though the sun never really played ball I still managed to get some reasonable images.

By the time the first race started I was already in my car and on my way home, reflecting on Cheltenham 2011. Perhaps this year the recession had started to hit, as there were only three or four Irish registered helicopters present, there seemed less helicopter generally and there appeared to be more space in the event car parks and grandstands. One thing was for sure though, the atmosphere still remained.

The largest helicopter present was the Sikorsky S76. During the week quite a few made an appearance including pairs from JCB and Air Harrods along with a brace of Manx registered examples.

Arguably the prettiest type present at Cheltenham was the AgustaWestland A109, various examples are shown below.

Other types present included the Eurocopter EC135, a shape more normally associated with either Police or Air Ambulance operations.

The SA365 Dauphin..

The EC155, a much updated and newer genration helicopter with takes its heritage from the AS365 Dauphin

The EC120, another Eurocopter product

AS355 Ecureuil

Bell 206 Jet Ranger

And Bell 206 Long Ranger

The latter Long Ranger G-LVDC had only emerged from the paint shop at the start of the week and looked immaculate with its fresh paint job. Rumour has it that the registration stands for Large Vodka Diet Coke !

Lotus Evora 414 Evolution - Geneva 2011

During February I undertook a commission to photograph specific details of an automotive exhibit that was bound for the 81^st International Motor Show in Geneva.

Right up until walking into the design workshop on the morning of the shoot I knew the marque of car involved, but very little else.

I can now reveal that the car in question was the cutaway hybrid Evora 414Evolution exhibit, which showcases the advanced series hybrid drivetrain, the production Lotus Range Extender and intelligent HALOsonic technology.

To maintain client confidentiality the only photos exhibited below, are two examples that were actually distributed by LOTUS as part of their press release.

As a photographer it makes a nice change to see the photos being used as only too often we never get to see the end results of our work.

Further images from this shoot along with full details of the reveloutionary 414 Evolution can be found at Lotus Cars - Lotus Evora414evolution

Its Like Marmite

The results of HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography / Tonemapping are very much like marmite, you either love them or hate them.

The whole HDR process is new to myself and so far has proved complex, challenging and also very frustrating. Armed with a number of books just dedicated to this form of photography I'm slowly getting to grips with the basics, although I don't claim to have a deep technical understanding of the process yet. The one thing I am sure of, personally I love the effects that it offers, especially some of the more extreme results.

During some recent construction site photography I picked out a few images that I thought might just prove interesting after the HDR / Tonemapping treatment. After an hour on the computer the results are below, see what you think.

Has Fotopic gone for good this time ?

Like many photographers I started using fotopic to host 'fun' image galleries that were easy for people to view.
The initial intention with fotopic was as a stop gap until such time as I had a full web site up and running, but as time moved on I put it to use in a different role, a gallery of images form Halfpenny Green Airfield.
On several occasions the gallery has crashed or been unavailable, but this has generally been down to technical glitches at fotopic. Now though, just as the number of followers seems to be growing it looks like fotopic has shut down once and for all.
Optimistically I'm hoping that I'll click on my favourites and the site will reappear, but in truth its not looking good....

Here We Go ! - Welcome To The Perspective-i Blog

After much consideration, I have finally taken the plunge and started a blog.

Initially posts will be a little slow as I'm going to spend a bit of time getting to grips with the layout, customizing the template and generally getting used to the idea of running a blog.