WHERE SPEEEEED AND PASSION MEET
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Bruno's Blog, from a fan for fans!
Welcome back to my blog, thanks.
It seems you are curious. :-)
Great, I'll tell you now what was different on that "WRC 3 launch party evening" in November 2003:
As always, the game intro was the first jaw-dropping highlight. Right after that, Beda and I checked all driver's introduction clips. Meanwhile, all the faces were as familiar as the snooker stars.. Damn, Eurosport, I still hate you for that! ;-)
Finally we had seen enough and we started playing, as we have done for years.
At some point in the championships, we played "ADAC Rally Germany" which was part of the official WRC calendar for the second time. Its introduction clip impressed because the rally hosting city center of Trier and its Roman times "Porta Nigra" looked similar like some old villages in Switzerland. At some point while Beda had to wait until I had beaten his record time, he asked if I knew when Rally Germany will be held in 2004. Not too long after his question, I had set a new best time and handed the controller over to Beda. Then I checked internet which was quite an adventure back in these days. The waiting time compared to the effective time in the net felt like 10:1... Do you remember these days? Dear god, times have changed for good! :-D
I found out that Trier was about 550 km away from Switzerland. If we drove toll-free and fast German autobahn, we could do it in less than 5 hours... The rally itself was on 3rd weekend of August which fitted perfectly to our holiday plans. That's why we spontaneously decided to do that trip and see it live.
Beda and I have an engineer's mind, means we develop our strategy from a future target on backwards to now. Our brainstorming all evening long led to the conclusion to find an all-inclusive tour operator and to make sure that we got nice memories, means pictures.
A few weeks earlier (October 19, 2003) I had been in Monza, Italy to spectate at the FIA GT 500. To get nice memories from there, I had borrowed my brother in law's Minolta Dynax 7000 analogue camera. This was a quite good camera and therefore I expected to get quite good pictures... And of course I had taken the best pictures ever!
All the cars were frozen in action in the very middle of every picture, quite small but size is overrated anyway and the disturbing mesh wire fence which patterned all the action wasn't there, I swear! But still, they were the best motorsport pictures ever! ;-)
My mind changed slightly after I had compared my pictures with the ones in motorsport magazines... Dear god, my pics were crap! The formerly best pictures ever disappeared in the lowest drawer of my desk and never came back to daylight.
Before you even consider that I'm going to show you samples: Forget it! ;-) They stay locked in FOREVER! :-D
It goes without saying that something had to be changed for our upcoming very first WRC rally!
First of all, I had to have my own camera! A better one than the one I used to borrow. Because a better camera takes better pictures! ;-)
Surprisingly that Christmas time again, month ended before money and I yielded the temptation of a special offer in a showroom window: A totally up-to-date Minolta Dynax 5 with a set of two lenses, 28-100 and 70-300. Maybe the best part of that deal was a voucher for a one-day photography training at Minolta Switzerland HQ.
Been there, done that, of course! I can honestly say that this training day opened my eyes for what can be done with aperture, shutter speed, exposure correction and more terms I hadn't ever heard before...
I have found out then that I had the tool to shift from a snapper to a photographer!
As always, practice makes perfect and that's why I signed in for "photography for beginners" course at our local evening school.
I remember as it was yesterday when I went there for the first lesson somewhere in early February 2004. We were 2 guys and 12 girls (or ladies?) and when it was time to introduce ourselves and explain our motivation why to join this course, I was the only one among all the future portrait, flowers and pets photographers who wanted to capture the action, speed and dynamics of motorsports. All eyes wide open on me told me it's going to be 10 tough lessons...
These days, it was learning the hard way, actually "trial and error" to be more precise.
The fact that I had to wait a few days for the results after every shooting made my learning curve looking more like a flat line without a big tendency to rise...
That's why the "Advanced photography 1 and 2" courses followed subsequently.
Between the weekly lessons, I was outside a lot, shooting driving cars. Must have been weird for some drivers, especially when I practiced the use of a flash at night-time... ;-)
That was the main reason why these days gaming had lost its status as my hobby #1.
But for the best possible memories of our Germany trip, I subordinated everything else to that goal.
The final photography lesson ended only a few weeks before Rally Germany and I felt well prepared.
Was that enough to get decent pics and how was it to see my first WRC rally live?
Find out in my next blog, coming soon...
High octane greetings and Uf Wiederluege!
-Bruno-
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