Jaguar XJ | Behind the Scenes from Richie Thomassen on Vimeo.

It’s like a noisier, less civilised version of Goodwood! There are monster trucks, a jet car, Terry Grant’s stunt show, pro & run-what-ya-brung drag racing, the Fuel Girls and even some nutters trying to modify a car from standard to stunning during the weekend.

The images will be online here after the show, but to whet your appetite, take a look at some from last years show.

Every July, Lord March opens his grounds to tens of thousands of petrolheads. All the major car manufacturers build what can only be described as huge showrooms and the top F1 teams roll up in their trailers.

An event not to be missed by any respecting car nut!

I’d shot in one of these barns before so I had a fairly good idea when I got there what I wanted to try. A quick word with Chris, driver of the Skyline and shepherd of the Sextons Grid Girls, and everything was set.

The idea was to cross light the car with slashing hard light coming on from 45 degrees camera left and right but keep the girls lit softly with a more central shoot through umbrella.

Here are the results:

Thanks to the Emmas, Gemma, Jen and Chris (And sorry to the other Gemma! I’ll get you next time!)

For the gear heads; we were travelling light as we had to carry everything with us so all the shots below were lit with speedlights, using everything from Westcott umbrellas to home-made grid spots. Two Manfrotto nano light stands did the bulk of the work while my assistant for the day, Helen, acted as a VAL for the 3 light setups. Camera-wise, I used my 5DMkII with my 24-105MM L F4 and 70-200mm L F4 lenses.

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments.

Thanks to Georgia for making the trek down to Bristol and for being such a pleasure to work with. You can find out more on her webiste www.georgia-graham.com or follow her on Twitter.

This year I decided to try something a little different. Instead of using just the available light and adding a wink of fill with an on-camera ETTL flash, I got the light a bit higher. A lot higher in fact – about 10 feet up at the end of a monopod positioned by Helen, my able assistant for the day.

It was too sunny for Canon’s own infra red system and I don’t have a set of radio ETTL triggers like the latest Pocket Wizards or Radio Poppers so I stuck to manual and a simple RF-602 trigger.

Half power on one of my old Nikon SB-28′s was the sweet spot with the camera set at its max sync speed of 1/200th and the aperture ranging between f5.6 and f9 depending on whether the subject was in or out of the shade. The flash was also physically moved closer or further out to match the aperture (closer as the aperture was stopped down) to save adjusting it between shots.

Here are the results:

There’s a mix of available light and flash shots here from Saturday and Sunday so thanks to the girls for putting up with me and my two Voice Activated Light stands, Chris and Darren. See you all at Modified Nationals

Congratulations to Georgia Graham, one of the car show regulars and Max Power babe, who was crowned MCN Babe of the Year 2010.

That’s enough words, I’ll let the pictures do the talking. You can find more of my MCN photos here

Light painting is a simple idea and it doesn’t take much trial and error before you start getting good results. You will need your camera locked down for this as you are taking long exposure shots – in this case 30 seconds. A tripod is best but a bean bag on a car roof/gate post/sleeping cow would suffice.

Use your camera’s built-in meter and juggle your aperture and shutter speed until you get a good exposure. By “good” I don’t mean zeroed out on the scale in your viewfinder however. We are shooting at night here so obviously the shot is going to be dark and we will be painting in some extra light in the foreground so we need to stop the camera trying to make everything look like a mid grey. Minus 2 stops should be about right, but take full advantage of shooting digital and fire off a few test shots. You can shoot in Aperture Priority mode for this and use the +/- EV control or you can go Manual for more control or if you need an exposure longer than 30 seconds.

Once you are happy with the overall exposure, you can start adding light. This is where the trial and error comes in as this is no exact science and there’s no TTL  – you are simply shining a torch on your subject. Obviously the bigger the subject and the further away it is, the more powerful torch, or longer exposure.

For this example I was about 30m away from the wind turbine using a small, yet powerful and tightly focused LED torch.

About 5 seconds tracing the beam up and down the tower with the remaining 25 seconds spent highlighting the rotating blades seemed to yield the best results. As you can see from the image on the right, there is quite a marked difference when adding the light to the image.

I think I may have a solution: Small (moo.com mincards), colourful cards with cheeky slogans.

Hopefully small enough to slip up the sleeve of a catsuit, bright enough to stand out in the crowd and cheeky enough to be memorable.

Collis Ta’eed at TheNetsetter makes a good point about publicising your goals. The thinking being that if you fail or back out you have some explaining to do.

So with that in mind, this weekend I shall be heading to a wind farm in deepest darkest Wales. The plan is to take some model shots at sunset and some more general stock photos the following sunrise.

What started as a day out at the World Aerobatic Championships at Silverstone has resulted in my getting published in another magazine. This time it’s a double page spread and 6 other images in “Loop“, the magazine for pilots.

I knew I’d got some good images so, inspired by  the advice of Scott Bourne and others, I did a little research, came up with a few aviation photo libraries and magazines and fired off a few emails. Later that day the sale was agreed.

OK, it’s not National Geographic magazine and I’m not able to retire on the proceeds, but it’s another name on the client list and my images and name in print again and under the noses of more potential buyers.

Start small, preferably in a niche market and getting published isn’t as hard as it may first appear.

Shutter priority was the way to go to keep images sharp but retain some blur in the propellers. Depending on what the plane was actually doing, that ranged from 1/160th to 1/400th. I then adjusted my ISO to get an aperture that gave me enough depth of field to hold the whole aircraft in focus given the speed at which the subject to camera distance changed as the planes flew head on towards me.

Spot metering proved a bit tricky, again because of the speed at which the planes were moving, so I manually compensated as the cloud cover changed to make sure the aircraft weren’t just dark spots against a bright sky.

And one last tip: If you plan on spending all day shooting upwards with a 100-400mm lens – Take a monopod!

Thanks, as usual, to every one who posed long enough for my camera to actually take an exposure!

See you all at Trax in September.

This is great for photographers.

There was a time when our images were only seen by the people we knew and saw on a regular basis or, if we were lucky, they’d be printed in a magazine. But now, we can get our work out there to millions of pairs of eyes. People we will never meet can now see and give us feedback on our images, they can follow us or become our friend and before you know it you have an army of fans hanging on your every word. Just look at Chase Jarvis, Joe McNally and Zack Arias to see just what can be achieved

This years weather was perfect too. Only 2 launches disrupted by winds and blue skys all the way through.

Here are a few images from the Thursday nightglow, the Friday morning mass assent and the Red Arrows from Saturday afternoon. As always these are available in a variety of print sizes, canvas wraps and other merchandise.