Formula Student Silverstone

After watching today's British Formula 1 race at Silverstone, it was fantastic to see Lewis Hamilton win is home grand prix. At the moment all of the teams will be clearing up all of their equipment and moving onto the next race in Germany. But the are another 107 teams frantically preparing for their own race at Silverstone next week.

This time next week the annual IMechE Formula Student competition will be over. The competition sees universities from across the world bring student designed, manufactured and driven racing cars to the Silverstone race circuit. After a series of design, cost and business presentations the cars will hit the track to compete in straight line acceleration runs, figure of 8 loops as as well as a single lap sprint and a final endurance race. After all of this one team and its car will be crowned the Formula Student UK champion.

Out of all the international versions of this competition (including an Australian, Brazilian, Italian, Japanese, German and 2 American events) the British version is the only competition not to see a 'home' team win the competition. This year Oxford Brookes University will once again be aiming to lead the British challenge in a weeks time.

Ahead of the competition Paul Chapman Pictures was once again invited to a recent testing session with the Oxford Brookes Racing Team. This was the last opportunity for the team to finalise the on track setup of their car before the competiton begins in Silverstone.

In a similar way in which Paul Chapman Pictures travelled with the team to the FSAE competition at the Michigan International Speedway, Paul Chapman Pictures will be present at the Formula Student event at Silverstone. Paul Chapman Pictures will aim to capture not only the Oxford Brookes University Racing team, but also many of the other British teams which will be present at the event. All of the photographs will of course be uploaded onto the website and professional 6"x4" photographs will be available to order direct from the website for just 99p plus postage.

As a teaser for what to expect at next weeks Formula Student event please enjoy the photograph of the Oxford Brookes Formula Student race car during the recent testing session.

Le Mans 2008

The annual 24 hour race at Le Mans in France is historic as it is spectacular. This year saw the return of both the Audi and Peugeot diesel race cars, each battling for the outright win this year. In the GT1 class both the Aston Martini's and the Corvette's were each battling for the class win. In both classes the racing was expected to be close, tough and a true display of endurance racing. The 2008 edition did not disappoint, with extra emphasis being placed on the '8' as Tom Kristensen and Audi successfully won their 8th Le Mans race win in the past 9 attempts. In the GT1 class the 009 Aston Martin was able to hold off the Corvette challenge, but with only four and a half minutes separating the two top GT1 cars after the whole 24 hours of racing.

Paul Chapman Pictures was on hand to capture as much of the action as possible. Throughout the whole weekend the weather conditions changed from summer sun, to April rain showers, from early morning sunrise to middle of the night darkness. All of which created difficult photography composition. (Although he lack of sleep probably didn't help at this point)

The circuit naturally provides some beautiful scenes, with the amphitheater at the Dunlop curves being a personal favourite. The addition of the glistening racing cars on track set the scene for photographs. More importantly it allowed Paul Chapman Pictures to use for the first time some newly acquired photographic equipment. Up until now all of the photographs which have been published on www.pcpimages.co.uk have all been taken with a Fuji 5600 digital camera. This time Paul Chapman Pictures was armed with not one camera but two! The second camera which many of the photographs were taken with was a 35mm film Canon EOS 5 camera. The decision to use a 35mm film camera was taken for a number of different factors, but the idea of using older (but by no means inferior) 35mm equipment at such a historic racing event seemed the perfect match.

The majority of the photographs that will be published on the website will be uploaded by the end of the week, once they have all been developed. At the same time the YouTube video will be finalised and posted on the pcpimages YouTube channel, which of course can be found in the top right hand corner of this blog too. In the mean time Paul Chapman Pictures is now beginning the organisation process of the next motorsport event to be attended - the Formula Student competition at Silverstone between the 10th and 13th of July.

We hope that everyone will enjoy all of the photos and the YouYube video, the experience gained at this years Le Mans event will continue to improve the quality of the websites content.

In the meantime heres a sneak peek preview of what to expect to be uploaded onto the website within the week... A Peugeot LMP1 race car in full pursuit of a possible first place.

Many Thanks.

Paul Chapman Pictures Abroad!

Hello again, with another monthly round up of all the goings on here at PCPimages.co.uk. During the 14th-18th of May Paul Chapman Pictures travelled with the Oxford Brookes Racing Team to America, more specifically to Detroit and the Michigan International Speedway. Oxford Brookes University were the sole British representatives of the FSAE competition, a competition in which student designed, managed and built racing cars compete to be the best in the world. Paul Chapman Pictures was on standby for the whole of the four day event to capture all of the action as it happened to the Oxford Brookes Racing Team. However Paul Chapman Pictures still found time to capture the excitement and atmosphere of many of the other international teams that were taking part. These photographs can of course be seen online at www.pcpimages.co.uk.

As part of the work carried out for the Oxford Brookes Racing Team Paul Chapman Pictures has once again created a YouTube video which encompasses all of the trials and tribulations of the Oxford Brookes Racing Team over the whole four day event. The video can of course also be seen here on this blog page, in the top right corner - check it out now!

Now that Paul Chapman Pictures has begun to spread its wings in the global motorsport arena, we decided that we liked the idea of travelling sooo much, that we thought we'd do it again this month!!! Paul Chapman Pictures can confirm that we will be present at the 76th running of the world famous 24 Hr Le Mans race in France! We hope to be able to come back with plenty of photographs which will of course be uploaded onto the website a.s.a.p, and the complimentary YouTube will follow later on after the event. Whilst attending the Le Mans race it will be an opportunity for us to try out some new photographic equipment which was recently bought to bring much higher quality photographs to you.

Whilst attending the race weekend in France we will be unable to process any orders, or respond to any emails sent to us. However any orders will be processed by mid day of the Monday after the race has finished. So again we will be out of the office from Thursday 12th June until the Monday morning of the 16th June.

Please find attached one of the photgraphs of the Oxford Brookes University Formula SAE race car taken on track at the Michigan International Speedway, and thank you once again for your time and consideration in reading this blog.

Latest Update

What a busy and eventful time it has been since the last entry with and both good and unfortunately tragic reasons. Firstly on the 30^th March David Leslie and four other occupants were killed during a plane crash at Farnborough,. David Leslie was amongst other things a part time lecturer at Swansea Institute of Higher Education. As a previous student at Swansea Institute of Higher Education (now renamed Swansea Metropolitan University) I was fortunate enough to meet David on a couple of brief occasions, clearly those occasions will be my last.

But with death comes rebirth. On this occasion hundreds of unique student designed and built racecars are beginning to show their presence on test tracks frantically preparing for the FSAE event on the 13^th-16^th May. For any non American teams, the added headache of having to crate up and ship/fly the team’s car out to America in time for the competition. For the sole British team entering the competition Oxford Brookes University have to design, build, test and now crate up their car and send it across to America in time for the competition. As the photographic supplier for the Oxford Brookes Racing Team Paul Chapman Pictures will be present to capture all of the action from all of the teams during the four day competition.

Preparations are fully underway for Paul Chapman Pictures to leave with the Oxford Brookes Racing Team on the 11^th May and travel to America. Unlike most of the other European teams entering the American Formula SAE event, the Oxford Brookes Racing Team are competing with a brand new race car, which has been conceived, designed and built all by students in just 8 months. Prior to the team sending the racecar and all of their support equipment to America the brand new car was unveiled outside of the Oxford Brookes University School of Technology.

Monthly Round-Up

Hello to everyone out there! Todays blog is really just a quick round-up of what has been happening on the website in the last month.

Firstly its been a month since the Autosport International Show at the NEC in Birmingham. Soon after the show had finished Paul Chapman Pictures had created and edited its own short video, showing many of the highlights of the show. Since it was posted on YouTube it has so far been viewed over 1,000 times. The response that this video has created has been far greater than we ever expected. But we thank everyone who has seen it, and if you haven't you can still find it at:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vPJFTgD8kXg

The second bit of fantastic information that we can report is that Paul Chapman Pictures is currently finalising an association with Oxford Brookes University Formula Student Team. This association will include supplying photographic and video coverage to the team. This year the team will be competing in 3 interantional Formula SAE events, the first will be in Detroit - America, the second will be at Silverstone Race Circuit - UK and the last event will be at Hockenheim - Germany. To kick start this association, Paul Chapman Pictures were invited to a recent test session of the Oxford Brookes Formula Student Team. The test session took place at Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground. Whilst we were present we were able to capture some exclusive on board footage of their car whilst it was on track. It was fantastic to be able to show the team, through the use of our equipment how the front suspension and wheels were in fact moving around as the race car went around the track.

Luckily for everyone we have also made this video open to the public, and this exciting and unique footage can also be found on YouTube at:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TxGMnijHfZY

With many more testing session planned in the future for the Oxford Brookes Formula Student Team Paul Chapman Pictures hopes it will be present at as many as possible to be able to capture and share with everyone more exciting footage of a real race car and team in action.

Lastly this month Paul Chapman Pictures has been joined with another motorsport photography website. This time we would like to publicly thank everyone at www.ncrallying.co.uk. Like I said in the previous blog, Paul Chapman Pictures takes every single partnership and association very seriously, and we look forward to creating stronger links with ncrallying.co.uk and Oxford Brookes Formula Student Team in the future.

For more information about Oxford Brookes Formula Student Team please visit www.brookesracing.co.uk

Many Thanks,

Paul...

Paul Chapman Pictures & Friends...

Yes, its true. In the last week Paul Chapman Pictures has been able to create three new website links to other motorsports photography websites. I would like to be the first in personally thanking the websites owners in agreeing to support my own site. Whilst I am continuing to learn about motorsports photography, and whilst the website is still in its infancy (5 months and counting!) I believe it is a true measure of the websites appeal to be able to create new links with more experienced photographic companies.

Therefore I would once again like to personally thank;

Alan Medlock at www.motorsport-images.net,
Ant Jackson at www.antjacksonimages.co.uk,
and Ian Hardy at www.ianhardy.net.

I feel that as a newly linked website I should return the favour by helping to raise the profile of those who have linked to my website.

Not to be left out I feel I should also give a quick mention to Paul Smith at www.paulsmith-photography.co.uk. as his website was the first to forge a relationship with Paul Chapman Pictures.

I hope that all of these new relationships can continue well into the future, further enhancing not only www.pcpimages.co.uk, but also those four websites listed above.

Please check out these websites, as they all offer different insights into the joys of motorsport.

Many Thanks once again,

Paul...

Autosport Show Video

Just another quick one, like the other racing events have I have attended in the past I have made a quick video of some of the highlights of the 2008 Autosport International Car Show. This time the video is a simple slide show of my favourite photos that I took during the event.
Although the video is fairly basic in its composition, I did spent alot of time tracking down a relevant piece of music that would accompany the photographs. Eventually I settled on a song titles "Ride In My Car" written and performed by the Woodsmen. Fortunately this song is free to download, and therefore I won't be having either YouTube or the music industry running after me with pitchforks and torches!!

Anyway the video is live and can be found on YouTube @ http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vPJFTgD8kXg

Enjoy!

Paul...