Ronny Gabriels Photography

Finally, the FIA GT came back to Belgium in what was going to be a great racing weekend. The 24h of Spa is probably one of the most famous races on the European continent and after missing it the last two years, I finally made it.

Maserati MC12

A weekend featuring European GT4, British Formula 3, Lamborghini Super Trofeo and of course, the full FIA GT circus is a feast for everybody who loves racing. Not only do you get the some epic racing cars from the likes of Maserati, Corvette, Aston Martin, Porsche and Ferrari.  This year the field was extended with the GT3 spec Alpina B6, the monsterous Ford GT (including one in 2010 spec) and the trackside Godzilla that is the Nissan GT-R. Add the GT4, Britisch F3 and Lamborghini Super Trofeo cars and any of you interested in racing know why you should have been there. 

Bruxelles corner at sundown

As more often than not, weather conditions made it quite tricky on Saturday, not in the least for the photographers. The weather change constantly from sunny, to dark overcast to rain. This meant that every 10 minutes I had to change the settings on my camera to get some decent exposures.  Sadly this didn’t always work out too well.  When you have to push the ISO up to 400 to get properly exposed shots (of moving cars), you’re almost guaranteed to have lower quality shots.  The end result was that only about 10% of the photos I took made it through the first cut.

The winner of the 24h of SPa – Corvette Z06

In the end I didn’t get all the great shots I wanted, but the result was nonetheless not that bad (after setting my goals from “Professional publication shots” to “Great racing shots made by someone behind the fence”). You can have a look at the final cut of photos on my website in the Photos - Racing Season 2009 menu. I hope you enjoy them.

As a PS a little story about, in my opinion, the best shot I got the entire weekend.

Godzilla (Nissan GT-R) in the Pitlane

This shot was taken while standing on top of the Formula 1 Pitboxes. I got up there by buying a more expensive “Paddock” ticket and joining the “24h Club” which was free with a “Paddock” ticket.  The shot was taken while the cars where getting to the starting grid.  All the pro’s and VIP’s where at that point either on the track or in the pitlane. So ironically if I had gotten press credentials, I would have never been there to take the shot. I like this serendipity.  I was jealous of the “credential” people all day, but in the end, my best shot would have never been taken if I had been one of them. 

50 people started on what would be a very interesting photo walk through Antwerp. It was the second annual Worldwide Photo walk organized by Scott Kelby and it was a record breaking edition. Over 900 cities participated and Antwerp was luckily one of them.

It was my first photo walk and although I was sceptic about it, it turned out to be a great meeting between a lot of photographers who just like photography. When it comes to photography, I’m not the most social of the bunch. In my personal opinion, photography is very much about your own personal vision. A lot of times when photographers come together it ends up being a (unhealthy) competition. Ironically, the World wide photo walk also has a competition attached, but I must say that not too many where actually thinking about that.

So it was a nice exchange of ideas, some chatter and just a nice afternoon of photographing a beautiful city.

Make sure to check the photos on the website. The best of these photos are also uploaded into Flickr.

The first race weekend for me in over a month turned out not to be everything I was hoping it to be.  The VW Fun Cup 25h has quite a nice line-up.  With the Belgian GT and the BTCS racing as an opening act followed by the biggest “amateur” endurance race of the season it promised to be interesting to say the least.  But this still is Belgium and at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit there is one thing you can never discount, the rain. 

 

For my third race weekend in a row, the rain spoiled a lot.  Where I was hoping to stay at least ‘till after dark, by 4PM I had been rain-soaked twice and my knees were killing me (what happens in very humid weather). So what should have been a long day at the track, turned out to be a short day. 

Too bad, because the atmosphere was there, a lot of entertainment and some great racing.  I got shots from the Belgian GT and BTCS races and some more shots from the paddock where VW was ever-present.  So all in all it certainly wasn’t a waist, but it could have been so much more. The photos can be found, as always, on the site under “Photos --> Racing Season 2009”.

So I’m driving to southern France tonight (after the Scott Kelby’s Photo Walk here in Antwerp) and will get back to Spa next weekend for, I hope, a rain-free and spectacular 24h of Spa FIA GT. So hope to see you all there for one of the most famous endurance races in the world (damn Le Mans ;-))