Today I’m digging into my photo archives to rediscover some images captured way back in 1990! Who needs a time machine? The occasion was a rally car event held in the Yarra Valley outside of Melbourne. As I recall, the event was in three stages, one being on gravel roads (temporarily closed to regular traffic) out of town and through the surrounding bushland. Another being around a sports reserve and the immediate area with a third being around one of the regions many highly regarded wineries. The images were, of course, captured on film (colour negative) and scanned into the computer many years later.
The camera used was almost certainly a Pentax SF7 35mm SLR with camera settings long forgotten. As an indication of how technology changes have effected the way we operate, I took a grand total of 36 shots of the event, one roll. The camera used, if I recall correctly, was capable of 2 frames per second at best and film and processing costs meant that you sub-consciously counted the dollars and cents every time you pressed the shutter button.
Compare that to today where my current digital camera will rattle through 20 frames per second and a day long event such as this might easily result in 1,000 or more images. The only restrictions being memory card capacity and spare charged batteries.
Above, a rally car stirs up dust as it races through the landscape. The region is known for its vineyards and rolling farmland. The hills in the background are part of the Great Dividing Range which extends almost the full length of Australia’s eastern seaboard.
In the above image, I considered obscuring or changing the number plate in digital processing, but then concluded that it was probably pointless given the car was almost certainly scrapped years ago. It was hardly being driven with longevity in mind!
The images were processed using Lightroom Classic and Photoshop with a Topaz plugin being used on the first photo to tame film grain. ~KD.