Cholmondeley Pageant of Power: Works Mini

Posted on 25th June 2012 by Lewis

For Father’s Day I took my Dad to the Cholmondeley Pageant of Power in Cheshire which is a similar event to the Festival of Speed, albeit on a slightly smaller scale. In amongst the modern supercars and aero engined racecars from the 1930s (42 litre V24 engines!!!) my favourite car of the event was this little Mini Cooper which was driven by Paddy Hopkirk in the mid 1960s. Unlike a lot of the other historic vehicles there which looked like they had come straight out of a museum, with spotless engine bays, this Mini looked like it had been driven hard, the engine bay was suitable oily and the block painted in the original British Leyland green.

Other highlights were Bentley demonstrating the smoothness of their engine, by balancing coins on the rocker cover and the drive there and back with my Dad, we were in his Porsche Boxster with the roof down, managed to avoid motorways for both journeys and stopped for an Olympic Breakfast at the Little Chef on the way there, all ingredients for a good road trip!

A39 Road Trip

Posted on 10th June 2012 by Lewis

This is my friend Ali’s BMW Z4, the photo was captured near Porlock on Exmoor whilst we were on a road trip.

A group of us were renting a house in Croyde, which I’d spotted last time I was there and after spending a week living in it, it is still my dream house. The plan had been to get a lot of surfing done, but mother nature had other ideas, and there weren’t any waves the whole time we were there. After being shown an article about the A39 on the Greatest Driving Roads website about how despite being named as a major road the A39 from Barnstaple to Minehead was in places just a single lane and had 1 in 4 gradient hills up onto Exmoor, a road trip was needed!

Unfortunately, as we are taking my MX-5 to the Western Isles later in the year, I was driving Jen’s 500, Ali & his girlfriend, also called Jen, joined us in Ali’s Z4. The 500 coped surprisingly well with the hills and the views over Exmoor and over the Bristol channel to Wales were great, Minehead was less so, my advice to anyone doing this road trip would be to stop at Porlock, which seemed much nicer than Minehead and the last part of the A39 wasn’t anything special. On the return journey we stopped at the top of Porlock Hill and I asked Ali to drive the section of road a couple of times so I could take some photographs. I’m quite pleased with the final result, I’d wanted to capture the sort of image that is used in Evo magazine which I think I managed, the only thing I don’t like about the image is that the roof is up!

After the photoshoot we went to Lynmouth for a cream tea and walk along the harbour, before heading back to Croyde. So even though we didn’t get to surf a road trip to Minehead was a great way to spend the day!

Fiat 500 Demo Car

Posted on 9th May 2012 by Lewis

Through my day job I managed to get access to this Fiat 500 demo car on my lunch break, the matte black wrap made it look moodier than normal Bossa Nova White Fiat 500s (such as Jen’s, previously featured on this blog) so that was the feel I tried to go for with the shoot. Other than the wrap/wheels/body kit, it has a custom interior, including remodeling of the dash and custom Recaro seats with the backs painted to match the car, but the Alpine audio system is really the centre piece, with so much equipment in the back that it makes my MX-5 look practical.

Costa Rica: Hoffmann’s Woodpecker

Posted on 26th April 2012 by Lewis

When we were in Santa Teresa our afternoon usually consisted of chilling out on the veranda of our cabin, one afternoon I was woken up from a nap in the hammock by a tapping noise, which turned out to be this Hoffmann’s Woodpecker on the tree next to our cabin. I don’t normally take photographs of wildlife, but I was able to get my camera and grab a few frames, including this one which I am quite pleased with, especially as it was taken on a relatively short 200mm lens.

As mentioned in my posts from Costa Rica, we actually managed to see more wildlife in the grounds of the Funky Monkey Lodge, where we stayed in Santa Teresa, than on some of our wildlife excursions. I think the relaxed vibe in Santa Teresa must have affected the local animals too.

Costa Rica: Tamarindo Sunset

Posted on 19th April 2012 by Lewis

I’m still working through images from my trip to Costa Rica (renovating a house, is taking up most of my free time at the moment), but I’m getting there! This sunset was captured in Tamarindo, the last place we stayed and there’s just something I really like about it, so I thought it was worth blogging. The photo isn’t technically perfect, in fact it was taken on my Canon Powershot S90 compact camera, but I really like the colours of the sea and the sky (I did accentuate them a bit when processing the raw file) and it just makes me want to be back in Costa Rica on the beach at sunset.

Southwold Road Trip

Posted on 8th April 2012 by Lewis

This picture was taken at Southwold in Suffolk, the destination of the 2012 “Fish and Chip Run” an annual event of the MX-5 Owners Club Northamptonshire Area.

The day started off with an early start and a dash to the layby on the A14, where we would be joining the convoy, which was already at least 30 strong, increasing to over 100 cars as we headed east towards the Suffolk coast.

When we got to the harbour at Southwold we parked up and headed straight to Mrs T’s Fish and Chip Emporium, to get what is probably the best fish and chips I’ve ever had!

It was with fully bellies that we took a stroll down to the beach, dodging the MX-5s that had taken over the whole harbour area. Just before we left I was able to pull my car out in front of some boats and take this photo, without causing too much of a traffic jam!

The drive home, via meeting up with one of Jen’s friends near Thetford and the B664 (Uppingham to Market Harborough) was one of my favourite drives of the year, with flowing roads, hardly any traffic and perfect weather!

Volkswagen Eos

Posted on 4th April 2012 by Lewis

My friend took us out for a spin in his new (to him) Eos the other week, whilst it isn’t an MX-5 it did feel good cruising around Liverpool with the roof down. We ended up in Crosby at Antony Gormley’s Another Place and while our girlfriends weren’t looking for a few minutes we managed to set up this shot.

Costa Rica: Cloud Forest Abstract

Posted on 10th March 2012 by Lewis

[photoshelter-img width=’375′ height=’582′ i_id=’I0000AizrfIU3t.Y’ buy=’1′]

I am working my through the images I took in Costa Rica over the last few weeks, and this one has jumped out as probably my favourite.

We were on the “Hanging Bridges” walk in the Selvatura Park, which is in the Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve and I saw these trees and knew I could do something with the symmetrical lines. However, on their own I wasn’t happy with that shot, it was too messy, so I added in a bit of movement and as soon as I saw the preview on the back of my camera, I knew I’d be really pleased with the final result.

Wide Angle Pan – From the archives

Posted on 6th March 2012 by Lewis

I was discussing panning motorsport shots with a colleague, which reminded me of this photo which I took at Snetterton a few years ago, before they changed the layout. The Esses is one of the few corners on UK tracks where you are allowed to be positioned quite close to the apex, close enough to be using a wide angle lens anyway. I’d previously shown an image taken slightly tighter, on the blog post for the Ma5da Racing meeting at Snetterton, but I’ve always liked this one more. It breaks a few rules for instance the car has got more space behind than in front, but rules are merely guidelines and I think it works.

The full Ma5da Racing Snetterton 2010 gallery is available in my archive.

Costa Rica Days 14 & 15: Travelling home

Posted on 4th March 2012 by Lewis

Our journey home didn’t start too well, our shuttle to the airport didn’t show up, meaning we had to get a taxi to get to the airport in time to catch our flight. Liberia Airport was suitably chaotic, probably not helped by one of our airline’s flights being cancelled or everyone having to go to a separate queue to pay “departure tax” before they could even check in.

The chaos continued when we got on the plane, as not only was the air conditioning not working (with the outside temperature well over 30c) but the pilot couldn’t get the engines started, which wasn’t exactly confidence inspiring. In the end we took off over an hour late and got to Newark without any problems, we even got a good view of Lake Nicaragua.

In the end the flight was 40 minutes late into Newark, leaving us less than an hour before our flight to Heathrow took off, with us needing to clear US immigration, collect and recheck our bags, pass through security again and get to the furthest gate away from where we started. It was a bit tense, especially in the queue for immigration and we needed to run most the way after that, but we made it onto our flight just before they shut the doors.

Again, the flight was fine and passed quickly, we landed early and even got through passport control without having to queue, but after waiting ages for our bags it became apparent that they hadn’t made the transfer at Newark, which wasn’t too much of an issue as anything important was in our hand luggage. We were met at the airport by my parents and it was good to be driven in a nice executive saloon on smooth motorways after two weeks of minibuses on unpacked roads.

As I type, my first memory card is being imported into Lightroom, so expect a few more posts over the coming days/weeks.

Lewis Craik

Author Archives: Lewis