This is the final shot from Chamonix – this is from Le Tour right at the top of the Valley. It’s a nice spot – there’s a nice long Blue down through the trees to Valorcine and lots of nice Reds. My favourite has to be a nice long run off-piste through the powder, finishing back on a Mogul field.

Taken from the top of the cable car at Brevent (Alt. 2525m) around 1500m above Chamonix below. I love this place – in all the years our family has been coming here, I’ve never tired of it. This peak (Brevent) is usually fairly peaceful as there are only two black runs back down to Plan Praz (525m below), so it doesn’t have the same amount of traffic as the lower slopes.

We hope to get back to Chamonix next year – although with the impending doom, I mean wedding (sorry Síofra!!!), it may not happen.

A little shed in the Flegere ski area in Chamonix, France. Had a great week, but didn’t have the camera out as often as I would have liked. The few times I did take it out, I massively over exposed everything (with exposure comp.). The main problem was that I couldn’t see the back of the camera due to glare from the sun to see if it was over or under exposed. Ah well, the snow was great – you can’t have it all!

About:
Noel Conroy and Michael Ward in a MKII Escort (1800 RS). I liked this because of the calm, relaxed look on Michael’s face – despite the fact that he was in the middle of a stage.

Settings:
1/100 sec, ƒ 9, ISO 125, 46.0 mm, AF – AI Servo
Normally (the only other time I’ve shot Motorsport in manual mode), I’d stick with 1/80 sec – but we were on a straight here and the cars were moving a little too fast to pan comfortably at 1/80 sec. I’d normally focus manually on a spot just in front of me too – but I found that because I was standing on a straight, I was getting upto four shots of each car at varying distances (from the camera), three of which would be out of focus. So I set the Auto Focus to AI Servo and it did a great job!

Processing:
B&W conversion, Partial Vignette, Cropped, Debris removed.

Next Time:
I’d love to introduce a strobe in a forestry stages rally – on a medium to low speed corner.