Ronny Gabriels Photography

Last Saterday, the BTCS was in Leuven for their second city demo. That means that the streets of Leuven were filled with the loud roars of the race cars participating in the BTCS (and some in the Belcar Endurance Series) this year. It’s always fun to see these cars outside their natural habitat, the racetrack. This year was no exception. There was quite a lot of people there from all around the country (and surroundings). I did have the idea that only a small portion of the participants had showed up, but even then, there were enough nice cars to make the trip worth it. Especially the new VW Scirocco GT was a very nice newbie in the pack.



Renault, Volkswagen, Porsche, KIA, BMW and Lamborghini were present including some of the major sponsors of the BTCS and Belcar Endurance championships.



KIA even brought their most famous driver, Koen Wauters, to do an autograph signing. He was not the only one of course. Other drivers included Steve Van Bellingen, Bert Longin, Marc Goossens, and many more.



So now that we got a glimpse of this year's cars, the wait is on for the first race of the season on the 11th of april in Zolder. We may just be in for a great fight for both championships this year.


For more photos see: http://ronnygabriels.smugmug.com/Public/Racing-Season-2010/BTCS-City-Demo

On Sunday, Antwerp harbor was the site of a gorgeous sunset. Sadly I was in the car and without a camera. Although I felt a bit of a warm glow seeing it's beauty, my inner photographer died a little bit.
Yesterday, I got my revenge.  I went out to shoot a panorama of the Antwerp skyline and in doing so stumbled upon a sunset rivalling that of Sunday.  Not quite as perfect, but hey, you can't have it all. The photos here are from about twenty minutes after the sun disappeared behind the horizon and were taken on a location that I drove after my panorama shots were taken.

This picture was taken on an outdoor walk with my dad.  The house you see in the background is an old house built as part of the old drifter's colony, in Dutch "landloperskolonie". This was probably the house of a high ranking officer because "the colony" was treated more like a prison than a shelter or refuge. Since the official status of "drifter" is no longer recognized in Belgium, the buildings there first became a real prison and now I believe they are a place where children hold agriculture camps (or something).

The fact remains that these houses are still beautiful and worth photographing.  Now actually this picture is not a very good example of that since the dominant subject in this picture is the sky.  I like this photo very much just because of the fight between the sky and the house for dominance.  The house as this seemingly tiny thing against the mighty sky and the sky is pulling out all the colorful stops just to show how beautiful it can be.  The sky obviously wins, but it gives this photo a third and maybe more important subject in my opinion which is humbleness.  Even this big house can be made to feel small when you measure it against nature.  If size matters, nature will always win ;-)

This is not by any means the best shot I've taken of a sunset, nor the best I've taken of a house in the open plains, but I like it because it goes just that little bit deeper than just what shows up visually.