For the regular Pants readers (yeah, all two of you...), if you recall back to March this year the words "Clipsal galleries" and the phrase "next few weeks" may sound familiar to you.
A measly four months later (!) I make good on my promise and have finally uploaded a bunch of photos of this year's Clipsal 500 racing event. Right on schedule, too... *cough*
Although I'll stop short of apologising for it, you'll notice that there seems to a large number of non-vehicular photos in the gallery, more to the point you'll find plenty of half-naked women much like the umbrella-wielding lady to the right...
There are really two main reasons for this (three if you think I'm some kind of pervert), which I'll try to explain briefly:
Firstly there's the spectator dilemma. Anytime the V8s were on the track I would be up in my designated seat in the pit straight stands because the general admission areas would be packed. While staying in the stands is great (TV screens, seeing all the action in the pits etc.), photography-wise there's not much variety in terms of angles, action etc...
Second is photographer dilemma. The Clipsal 500 is all about the V8s, but whenever they weren't on the track I would be walking around the circuit taking shots of anything interesting. Crowds, the scenery, abstract stuff, tons of stuff... It was fun.
Conveniently enough, literally right behind the stands I was in was a catwalk/runway setup, where at set intervals everyday there would be some sort of fashion show. Before going to Clipsal 500 this year I knew that family & colleagues were 'strongly suggesting' I get lots of shots of the catwalk models. Plus I knew that Google was directing plenty of people to my website because last year's gallery featured photos from a similar bikini parade. I knew what my audience wanted. :)
To have a look at some 130+ photos from this year's Clipsal 500, click here to visit the gallery. Also available for download in the gallery are a few full-resolution samples if people want to check out what sort of camera I'm working with. Although I'm sorry to have taken so long to post these pictures up, I'm quite pleased with how everything turned out with my camera's first big stress-test. Bring on 2006!