Let's get dusty

First day on the stages, which are ninety minutes out of Bangalore; and there wasn’t a single minute on the journey when I didn’t want the driver to stop and let me take some photographs, this is a very photogenic country. And there were the occasional moments when I was convinced we were all about to die, the approach to driving is somewhat random; like Thailand but with less directional stability and more use of horns.

After our recce on the first day, I was meant to sit down with Kishen and agree who would photograph where. But that never happened and instead I found myself dropped on the road next to the first stage and left to get on with it. Within five minutes I had regretted bringing my monster 300mm lens. My backpack weighed in at 12 kilos, which is 11 kilos more than I normally like to carry up a dusty hill in the sunshine.

There were three stages, and the cars would cover each stage twice on the first day, and twice on the second day, driving in the reverse direction. With 60+ cars in the event, there would be almost continuous action for the next 4-5 hours; so off I went.

Rallying is not that easy to photograph. As well as forward movement, the car is bouncing up and down, so shutter speeds cannot be too low. This is at 1/125th second:

The front of the car is nice and sharp, the rear is a blurry mess. Looks cool, but most shots taken at that speed just offer the blurry mess option, so usually I shot a little faster. Standing next to the road and shooting gives a fairly standard, and not very interesting view.

So I tried standing in ditch so the road was closer to eye level. This made things more interesting, both photographically, and olfactorily due to the rather unusual smells in the ditch. I tried not imagine what was decomposing under my feet.

There were also ditches to be found on the outside of corners. This was a little more dangerous given that the forces of gravity and a mistake by the driver could result in the thing decomposing in the ditch being me. She who must be obeyed would not have approved.

The best way of conveying speed was to photograph the car off the ground, and there were plenty of places where they were catching air.

Best jumpers by far were the Suzuki jeeps which would take off from the smallest of bumps.

Eventually made it out of the stage and back to the service park; hot, dusty and tired, and looking forward to getting back to Bangalore for a hot shower and some food. But Anna wanted to tour all the stages to make sure that the product signs were in the right place for the reverse runs the following day; so off we went for about thirty kilometres of rough driving before finally heading home.

Prepared from the previous day, I was sorting through my photos on my laptop on the journey and waiting for us to get close enough to Bangalore so I could obtain an internet connection and send them to David the media man. Then we had a huge storm. Then we had a puncture. Eventually we arrived home and I cleaned myself and the camera, backed up my photos and ate yet another delicious meal courtesy of Anna’s cook. Then I fell into bed and slept, tomorrow was to be more of the same.

Comments 🔗

2009-08-25 | Billy says

Great post … and love to know how my Lotus Cortina would have performed in this company … with Jim Clark rather than me in the seat of course …

2009-08-26 | Biggrtiggr says

Very easy to get airborne in a Suzuki jeep. Did it myself trying to avoid a kamikaze pilot on a Honda Wave.

‘Er Indoors was not happy, contents of her (typical Thai)snack bag spread around the cab, in her hair and up her nose!

Thanks for interesting posts