Back in the 1980’s if you were into rallying, BBC2 had a programme called Rally Report and without a doubt, I think for many fans and viewers the Group B cars were some of the. Unfortunately, I never made it to Weston Park as a teenager, but I remember watching the Lombard RAC on Rally Report as the cars and drivers traversed across the north of England, Wales and Scotland.
 
Over the past 30+ years rallying has gone through many transformations, the golden era the B Group cars a long gone, but people’s fascination with them is still as strong today as it was back in the day. When I saw a post online about the Classic Rally Festival at Weston Park, I decided to buy tickets, drive down and sleep in the van, so that Iwe could be up early to get to the water splash and then spend the rest of the day photographing other areas of the rally.

As I would not have press accreditation, I knew the spectating areas would be a fair distance from the action, so I opted for a 70mm-200mm lens with a 1.4 TC, so effectively I had just under 300mm of reach. Fran and decided to start at the water splash and then head to other locations, the problem with photographing at events is that you can start with a good location, but as the crowds of spectators arrive, once you move you have lost that location.

As everyone wants to see the action, you have to make do with what you have, this can be frustrating in trying to photograph key areas and sometimes the key areas in terms of large numbers of people, were not actually good photographically.

For our first time at Weston Park, both Fran and I came home with some good images, but despite the great atmosphere, no Rally Festival can recreate those golden days of rallying, but the opportunity to photographic some iconic rally cars made for a good photography project.    

I have put together some tips for photographing rally cars here

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