The Roaring Season

Wow.

nigel watts wrote:Terry S,
if you don't like what we post then don't look
But for goodness sake please stop your whingeing because it seems lke YOU can't be bothered making the effort either.
I'm still waiting for you to point me to YOUR photos so I can see how you do it.
This forum is supposed to be, and is, a place where we enjoy looking at images and read stories, memories etc.
Unfortunately you are starting to spoil that experience.
Please stop.

Can I suggest you have a look through this site. Every car and driver named.

http://forums.autosport.com/topic/205239-2017-phillip-island-classic-march-17-19/

I wont hold my breath for an apology from the participants in this thread - and their assumptions about us have sealed the fate that we probably won't consider covering FJ in the future. NZ only has one photographer making a full time living off motorsport. The rest of us mere mortals are accountants, retailers, teachers, university students and salespeople doing it because we love it, sticking to what we know and love.

And for the gentleman who found a car he didn't recognise, there is a contact me form on the website. We can identify a car relatively quickly because we've spent every evening for a week looking at said car and probably over a couple of rounds. And once we are home from our day jobs, we usually have a programme filed in the drawer in the spare bedroom.

Hopefully tonight I can finish editing my images from the three hour endurance finale and then prepare for covering our beloved 2KCup and SS Cup at Timaru this coming weekend.

Fair comment. I'm not having a go and believe me, I do understand the costs and the time involved. I was merely pointing out the earlier post with your emailed response.

I'm also aware of the shutter life - now, and my sole Nikon died at 23,000 (about half what it should have been) but when I bought it, I never knew that they had a limited shutter life! Fixing it is not financially viable.

I merely stated that even taking two or three shots of the FJ field, say 90 shots, may have been worthwhile, to leave you to concentrate on the other classes. Drivers are generally fairly ego driven and most want to see a pic of themselves. Some may even buy a pic...

Thanks for the response though. It is appreciated and hopefully, others may also have learned a wee bit about the subject.

Well, first off, thanks for the misquote. My reply to your email said, and I quote, "we didn't shoot formula junior sorry as we weren't aware that people would want them" because you asked us if we were going to post photos of the FJs - we can't shoot what we don't know there is demand for, as well as open wheelers not being our market. Sorry if that offends you, but I'm paying the bills for Media77. I know other professional photographers that did shoot the FJs, but they don't have websites, so are we getting it in the neck because we're more visible and easier to contact?

We make barely make enough to cover our costs to run the website, email hosting, web hosting, a pro dropbox account to move large files, subscriptions for editing software - all adds up quite quickly. Digital may seem cheap, but cameras have a limited shutter life, and a replacement shutter isn't cheap either. Our stuff appears everywhere without permission so that problem isn't unique to you, its a problem that comes with the internet.

There is the illusion too that digital doesn't cost. Have you bought a 4tb hard drive lately? A $4000 camera also has a limited life. 150,000 shutter clicks. There is the cost of the internet connection to upload it, and the cost of buying storage on a webserver. And memory cards.

Also, another 30 cars across say four races, would add about 2500 images to our workflow and thats something that we don't actually have time to process. Today, after having worked 8 hours, I came home and edited for three, cooked dinner and now I'm sitting in bed working on images. Now, if data is cheap, what about my time?

I make no apologies for deciding to run my business how I want to run my business. I certainly don't come and tell you what to do with your time.

paul lancaster wrote:Just got an email from media77, the photographers at the classic, they said that they never shot any formula junior pics, because they "didnt think anyone would be interested", really!!

So what is the true story?

I have never made a cent out of my photographs - even though several have been used on the covers of race programmes, print ads, Facebook cover pages, Club Magazine covers - all without acknowledgement or permission...

But there again I am just a snapper but carry the virtually the same costs and time demands as a pro.

Having made the effort to go a meeting as a pro, I would have thought that whilst there, for the sakes of another 30 cars, it would open up another income stream? It isn't as if there are extra costs especially with digital. I remember the days when all I could afford was 3 films and I had to save up for another couple of weeks for the processing! Then I was often very selective about what classes I shot...

Spgeti wrote:Alison, your work that Robert and you do for HMC/HSC is always appreciated. It was great to meet you both at Timaru and all our guys appreciated the photos from the meeting.

Keep the good work going...

Cheers
Bruce Dyer
HSC Director

Thanks Bruce. Just felt I had to respond to some very unfair comments made by people that have no knowledge of who we actually are or what we actually do!

Alison, your work that Robert and you do for HMC/HSC is always appreciated. It was great to meet you both at Timaru and all our guys appreciated the photos from the meeting.

Keep the good work going...

Cheers
Bruce Dyer
HSC Director

Special shout out to a lady in Timaru in the FJ pits who did want professional photos taken, but when pressed about payment actually wanted them for free.

I have just found this thread and I thought I would comment. First of all, Media77 is a VERY part time gig. We don't make a living off it and it barely covers its own costs. As such, we have to be selective in what we cover because with so many meetings, we cannot cover every single class, car, race AND do our day jobs which subsidises our cameras, website and editing software.

I'm sure you all enjoy looking at the photos of the cars on our website, but we pay monthly to have that hosted, so that website doesn't come for free, hence we have to be selective in our target markets to make it work for us. Being selective in what we cover means that we can have some semblance of a life that isnt working 40 hours a week at in our chosen careers and then another 30 hours a week on photos, every week.

If you take the time to look around our website, you'll soon figure out our target market is saloon/muscle/2kcup/clubsport racing. If we know in advance that someone is committed to buying photos for a weekend, we can make an effort. Because I'm sure we all hate time wasters that commit to something and never carry through and we get that a lot.

What you see in the URL is not the actual file name. As already mentioned, its a huge job to rename files, and the URL that you see in the address bar is just the address of the page which the photo sits in. The URL is determined by our hosting company which is based in Canada. On top of paying them to host terrabytes of images, they also take a cut (35%) of every single sale we make. They get two cuts of the penny and we get whats left on the 11th of the following month.

As for the suggestion that our accreditation be removed? Every photographer accredits for the meeting as a whole. In our case, we were at Timaru at the request of another category, otherwise we would have stayed in Christchurch and saved our petrol. As for Skope, that is our only meeting each year that we go out and shoot for fun, to try new techniques/locations/angles etc because at every other meeting, we only have 8 laps to get the shot.

So next time you see a photo, think about this. To you, an image file may have no value, its just some bytes. But to motorsport photographers, every image has a value made up of that shutterclick, webhosting, time to edit, software costs, depreciation on camera gear, maintenance, education and safety equipment.

Here is a link to a site that has details on most of the FJ period marques :

http://formulajunior.com/fj-marques/

If you want to buy one then there are a few for sale here :

http://formulajunior.com/for-sale/

It includes two in New Zealand (Auckland):

- Rob Williams' front engined Elva 100 (2nd car listed in front engined category). This is an excellent buy for a car that performs well and has a good history.

- The ex-Len May Cooper T56 - again with a great history and just totally rebuilt. This is the first car listed in the rear engined category.

Come and join the fun and keep these fantastic cars in New Zealand!

Exactly! Use the internet and where possible, add information but it can be absorbing, frustrating, rewarding, informative, entertaining, in not very equal proportions.

The biggest frustration is still drivers who enter late and therefore do not appear in the programme - or organisers who stuff up the programme, but thankfully, that is a rare occurrence.

Lucky me, I'm too thick skinned to get upset by negative criticism seaqnmac27! Renaming photographs individually (as opposed to in bulk) is what takes the time. I bulk rename by date as I agree, IMG5433 DSC2345, or i-Hzd3J5g is meaningless.

What critics, sorry, a critic, may not realise, is that we can't just upload pics as they are, as there are 2 size limits for this website. A maximum of 185kb and also, 850 pixels wide. That means making copies before uploading, as even scanned negatives or slides can easily exceed this limit.

* Just found that I've accidentally overwritten a whole pile that I'd scanned, with the reduced sized images posted on TRS, so will have to scan them all over again... Oh deep joy.

Back to FJ's. I found one official website that lists all makes, but many links do not have pictures.

It is not a perfect world, but I live by the 80/20 rule. It takes 20% of the time to get it 80% correct but 80% of the time to get that last 20%. If I were perfectionist, I really wouldn't get much done at all.

We can always hope that someone can set up a comprehensive website with all FJ races, cars, drivers, results, pics etc., right from day 1. Good luck with that, but don't hold your breath. Meanwhile, there is a lot of stuff out there, but it just takes some effort to find it.

I am going to stoke the fire, poke the bear, I am sure you know what I mean, having just gone through some of the links provided, I noticed that I could cross reference the cars from Mylaps, with the images provided on Media77, however there was, i discovered an issue, because on the first page of the photographs from Skope and the images from Mainland Muscle, was a car i have only a passing awareness of, its the ex Pierre Neame Capri, however, Media 77, and I know, how dare a professional multimedia business in this day and age do this, but they have labelled the photograph as i-Hzd3J5g, now, that doesn't really help me much as I cannot see a car number so I cannot identify the pilot!!
Now I could just rant and rave and send a nasty email or message to Media77 about labelling practises of their 678 photographs over 3 categories from the Skope meet...or I could look at other photgraphs of the car a the meet from Media77, identify it as car 777 and then note it is driven by Andy Lloyd, then I can find out more about both Car and driver, if I choose, without upsetting those who labor long and hard to make sure those of us unable for whatever reason, to attend events, can in some way get information about car and driver, yes, it takes a bit more work from us plebeians, however, in my opinion, it is far better for me to do the legwork than upset those who actually make the effort to give us hours of viewing pleasure

Why would anyone be interested in something like this !..How bad is that !


Thanks even more Nigel

I don't believe it! Media 77 should lose accreditation when a class like the FJ is in the midst of a world trip with cars from all over the world. Obviously they don't do any background homework. Were they the "official" photogs?

Unbelievable!

There are one or two classes I personally don't really care for, but as a very amateur photographer, I do try to take at least some pics when I can. But a professional outfit ignores a whole class? Shame on you media77.

Just got an email from media77, the photographers at the classic, they said that they never shot any formula junior pics, because they "didnt think anyone would be interested", really!!

John,
I can see what Terry is describing. Try this one and then go to the results for an example.

http://racing.natsoft.com.au/results/#2


Terry,
You are going to get so good at this that you will be able to do the inputs for US.
You will have a full time job keeping up with Ray and Nigel.
I am doing a brief sample for you at Nigel's thread for the F1 cars at Taupo.

(Ken H)

John McKechnie wrote:Both those come up HTTP 404 Not Found.

Now hopefully OK

What a great weekends racing by great people at Teretonga. Thank you guys for coming all this way.
I hope you all enjoyed yourselves.