BMW Z4

We’ve just had a week away on the Costa del Sol, and yes we did see some Sol.  There may be a few photos to prove it soon.

In the meantime, here are a couple of attempts to photograph a rather smart car.

I attended a Yeo Photo Group meeting a couple of days ago.  The idea was to find out how to take decent photos of cars.  The event was very well attended, with a BMW Z4 taking the star role.  The high attendance meant that there were a lot of cars parked around the subject, and a lot of tripods and photogs as well.  For me, this immediately presented the problem, with a well polished car as subject, of reflections.  As usual, except when I am intentionally looking for reflections, I often don’t notice them until inspecting the images on the computer.  Even so, there was a ‘horseshoe’ of cars parked around the BMW and I don’t know how I could have avoided the reflections without shooting from a very much higher or lower position, particularly bearing in mind the multitude of contours of the car body.

Wiscombe Park – 3

In the last couple of posts about last Sunday’s visit to Wiscombe Park, I showed something of the variety of types of car that are used for speed hillclimb competition.  This is another car that interested me.  It is something of a ‘mixed bag’, known as a Kayne Special.  I didn’t get to talk to the owner, so I didn’t get any detail information at the time, but fitted with a Rover V8 motor, it did have one of the largest engines in competition on that day.  I do like large engines in small cars.

First a couple of shots taken in the paddock,

Kayne Special
Kevin Frost’s KMD Sports in the paddock.

Kayne Special
John Biggs’ Kayne Special

and then one on the hill.

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Since the weekend, I have done a little ‘googling’, and I have found ‘Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres’, a blog which provided a lot of information about the Kayne Special.  In fact there was a series of three Kayne Specials, designed and built by one Colin Cooper.  The following links, Kayne Special 1, Kayne Special 2 and Kayne Special 3, summarise the story of these cars, leading up to the one, driven by John Biggs, that was seen at Wiscombe Park last weekend.

My thanks to Ralph for providing information which gives some background on the Kayne Special.  I would also recommend his blog to anyone interested in motoring and motorsport as it provides a variety of ‘gems’ of information.

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Shiny or what?

Our efforts to follow the sun today, took us to Weymouth and whilst walking around the harbour, we came upon this example of what a properly clean and polished car can look like.

Welcome to Dino

Dee has named her (our) new wheels ‘Dino’.  This has been the cause of my sleepless nights over the last couple of weeks.  Picked it up today and took it for a good run down to the coast this afternoon.  Bearing in mind that the temperature didn’t get above about 3 deg C, with a brisk wind today, you could be forgiven for thinking this not a good start for an open top car.  It was in fact perfect.  The sun was shining and the heater is fantastic.  An all round good afternoon.  No real time for proper photos.  Just one to register the event.