Travel Photography Scholarship 2008 - The Winner Tells All!

Day 4 - The Races are Over

AUSTRALIA | Saturday, 23 August 2008 | Views [286]

This morning we managed to get some shots of the camels getting ready for the race. We arrived to the show grounds and got to shooting immediately. There were a couple other photographers there and they were all shooting flash with wide lenses. Since I had neither a wide lens nor a flash, I decided to pull out my tripod and get a long exposure of the whole scene. I set the exposure to 30 seconds and pressed down the shutter button. At that instant, I saw a camel emerge from behind a truck so I sprinted over to Jason (who was in frame) and got him to fire a couple flashes with his camera at the camel in question. The result was pretty cool, and I’m happy with how it turned out.

As the camels made their way to the start line for a second day of racing, I stayed at the show grounds to shoot the Jockeys trucks in the morning light. However, Jason decided to attempt a mad dash after the Camels all the way to the start line; with the car keys.
Half an hour went by before I started wondering where Jason ended up. I suspected he made it to the start line, but with no car keys, I was essentially stranded. Finally, a very out of breath Jason Edwards emerged from a corner of the show grounds. Apparently he had tried to climb a wire fence to get back into the show grounds, only to find himself hanging upside down with his boot tangled in the top of the fence. From that point on we agreed to hand over the car keys before chasing after wildlife in the bush, little did we know we would make the same mistake numerous times further down the road.

The race today went well. We managed to get all the shots we planned for and couldn’t get yesterday due to light complications and time management issues. By noon Jason and I were happy with the pictures we had, and decided to grab some lunch and head to the community centre, so that Jason could give a short talk to the local residents about working for National Geographic and the art of photography in general.
Later that afternoon, after the talk, we were taking pictures of the town when the Mayor of Hughenden walked up to us and pulled Jason aside to have a quiet word with him. It turns out that the Mayor had arranged for Jason and I to get some aerial shots of the town and nearby porcupine gorge tomorrow morning! Way cool.
That night at the pub, Jason and I shared some pints (not really, they were “schooners” which are a lame Australian attempt at a pint) with a couple other photographers. It was interesting to see and hear the different experiences these other photographers had, compared to those of Jason. It was cool tthat all these photographers were all shooting the same event, but for different levels of publication, whether it be Getty, the local newspaper and National Geographic. That night I got to bed fairly early. As mentioned before we had to be at the aerodrome for our private chopper ride in the morning!