Paul Chapman Pictures Puts the Consumer First

As of today the Paul Chapman Pictures website has been accredited by the SafeBuy company. The Purpose of the SafeBuy Assurance scheme is to allow online retailers to differentiate themselves from both less reputable and secure competitors. The SafeBuy scheme is supported by The Office of Fair Trade, the institute of Directors as well as the Institute of Direct Marketing. In order to comply to the SafeBuy scheme the Paul Chapman Pictures website has had to adhere to several requirements including:

• Adhere to the terms of the Sale of Goods Act, the EU Distance Selling Regulations and the EU Directive of Privacy and Electronic Communications.
• Confirm to the Data Protection Act 1998.
• Provide security for the processing of credit card transactions.
• Include physical location and contact details for themselves on their website.
• Display the total price consumers must pay for goods including delivery costs and provide a clear explanation of the delivery procedures.
• Advise the consumer if 'cookies' are required for the processing of data.
• Not use 'spam' for marketing purposes.
  

The SafeBuy company vets all sites during the accreditation and continuously carries out 'mystery shopper' exercises and standards checking to ensure that retailers are adhering to the scheme.

In the event of a consumer purchasing problem, SafeBuy has a mediation service, at no cost to the consumer or retailer, which can be referenced via the contact tab. The consumer has further right of redress through the SafeBuy arbitration scheme run by the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators at www.idrs.ltd.uk/safebuy

(Courtesy of SafeBuy Ltd.)

It is Paul Chapman Pictures wish to ensure that every single customer is treated fairly and with the utmost of respect. By displaying the SafeBuy logo on our website all visitors can feel safe in the knowledge that our website is a professionally run and maintained website.

We feel that by gaining the SafeBuy accreditation Paul Chapman Pictures can be further taken seriously as a website which puts the interests of the consumer first. Although the website is still relatively young, we feel that this accreditation shows our commitment to creating a safe, professional and pleasant website to visit, enjoy and shop at.

Another benefit of gaining the SafeBuy accreditation has been the receipt of legally correct and proper privacy policy and terms and conditions documents. These are now fully in force and available throughout the whole of the Paul Chapman Picures website.

Lastly Paul Chapman Pictures would like to wish all of its customers a pleasant and peaceful new year, and a joyous 2009. Here at Paul Chapman Pictures we are franticly working towards confirming the 2009 motorsport racing season.

Ready, Steady, Rally!

After spending the whole weekend up in Wales photographing the final round of the World Rally Championship its now time to start publishing the best of the shots. In true Paul Chapman Pictures tradition the first item to be published is the YouTube video. This time the video features photgraphs from the Swansea SA1 service park, as well as night time photographs from inside the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, and to top it all off the final part of the video features live action from Sebastian Loeb, Steve Perez and the unmissbale Valentino Rossi!

Stay tuned as the photographs will be added to the website, ready to be ordered within the next week, and just in time to still make the last day of trading in which Paul Chapman Pictures can guarntee Christmas delivery on the 19th December.

Paul...

Christmas Shopping

Once again we begin to reach the time of year when the weather turns cold, the warm glow of the fire fills our hearts and dear old Santa decides whether you've been naughty or nice.

This Christmas give that someone special something that they can use all year round - a brand new Paul Chapman Pictures 2009 A4 calendar!! Each month a specially selected photograph has been chosen to reflect the mood of each month. The picture choices were hard as the ever growing archive of photographs that Paul Chapman Pictures has taken over the last 12 months has steadily increased.

One final note is that to guarantee 1st Class Christmas delivery of any photographs, A4 prints or even the brand new 2009 Calendar all orders must be placed and confirmed by the 19th of December.

PCPimages YouTube Channel Turns 1 year old too!

Hello to everyone once again. This short blog entry is just to raise awareness to the fact that as of the 28th October the Paul Chapman Pictures YouTube video channel has been in existence for a full year. In many ways this short blog is also a huge thank you to all of the motorsport fans around the world who have been watching all ten short videos over the last year. Thanks to all of your help a total of 9,447 videos have been watched on our channel. Building on this fantastic first year of YubeTube videos Paul Chapman Pictures will continue to expand on our video catalogue, as well as increasing the multimedia qualtiy throughout the new videos.

The initial idea was to use the popularity of YouTube to help raise the impact of the Paul Chapman Pictures - Motorsport Photography website through the use of free and entertaining videos. We feel that this is being achieved with many other postive spin-offs for the website.

Quickly to summarise we wish for all the YouTube watching to continue, and rest ashored more videos will be added over the next year - starting with the WRC at the Millennium Stage in Cardiff at the beginning of December, with more info coming soon...

Paul Chapman Photography Returns to Wales

For the third consecutive year Paul Chapman Photography will be covering the final round of the World Rally Championship at the Wales Rally GB from the 4th-7th of December. As usual the final stage on Saturday will be held within the Millennium Stadium in the heart of Cardiff. Although PCP will not be able to cover all of the rally stages it is possible to confirm our attendance to the Millennium Stadium stage and the service park throughout the weekend, with any luck additional stages will be added to the weekends schedule.

As is becoming customary of Paul Chapman Pictures a full multimedia YouTube video will be created, featuring the main highlights of the rally weekend. To date the pcpimages YouTube channel has seen nearly 9,000 video views. No other motorsports photography website offers such a free service to its customers and fanbase. Rest assured PCPimages.co.uk is working hard to confirm future 2008 and 2009 motorsport events - with the announcements being made here first.

In the next blog entry the long awaited Photosynth application will be discussed, as well as other 3D photographic applications. However this blog has had to be delayed as we are currently still awaiting further 3D converted photographs to correctly show and discuss the latest developments in photographic production.

Paul Chapman Pictures 1 year on...

After a long a break, Paul Chapman Pictures has returned with more blogs, website updates and much more.

Firstly I have to confess that this break in blogs has been too long. However now that my MSc dissertation has been completed at Oxford Brookes University I can now fully commit to the website to improve its functionality and looks. Although the amount of time that was spent working on my dissertation distracted from the upkeep of the website, I had no option, degrees are never easy, but postgraduate degrees are even harder - period. However I wouldn't change a second of it, as the experience I have gained will stay with me forever.

My main experience at Oxford Brookes was being the official photographer of the Oxford Brookes Formula Student race team. This role has now been completed as the team attended the Formula Student Germany Competition at the Hockenheim F1 race circuit. This was the last event of the three competitions that the team were intending to participate in. These photos can of course be found on the website.

After travelling back from the competition in Germany the Paul Chapman Pictures website achieved its first birthday since its inception in late August 2007. In its first year the website has grown and evolved. The photo gallery alone has grown to hold an impressive 560 photos, ranging from 11 different motorsport events, taken in 4 different countries.

One of the key differences that Paul Chapman Pictures has strived to make is to widen the websites appeal and awareness by using new and innovative technology. The main way in which this has been achieved is through the YouTube videos. The first YouTube video was added to the servers in late October 2007, since then a total of 10 videos have been added to the pcpimages YouTube Channel. These videos were intended to showcase many of the best photos taken from each featured event, with many of the photos then available to order directly from the website. The popularity of these videos has been overwhelming, since adding the first video a total of 7,216 video views have been made worldwide. No other competitor website offers such a service to its customers and fan base.

This very Blog has been used to allow everyone to understand how the website has evolved, and what to expect in the future with regards to updates, news and forthcoming motorsport events. Look forward to more regular and entertaining Blogs in the coming year.

From the very beginning Paul Chapman Pictures has utilised technology to showcase the website, the future holds more technology - More details will be disclosed on another dedicated Blog, all I will say for now is Photosynth...

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...

Autosport International Show

Well you know when its a new year, because its time for the annual Autosport International Show. This year Autosport were teamed up with PistonHeads.com, who brought along their own smaller sports car show. Being a motorsport engineer and a part time motorsports photographer means that I can appreciate both sides of the Auotosport Show. The Thursday and Friday of the show are dedicated "Trade" days. During this time many of the companies produce or supply components, equipment, software or hardware for race car teams throughout the world. This year some of the new innovations included Flybrid's new and so far the only fully built and tested KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) flywheel. In 2009 the FIA have insisted that all Formula 1 cars have to have these new energy recovery storage systems fitted to them. As this is the first of these KERS products to be shown to the public there was alot of expectation and interest.

On the other hand this year saw even more sports and racing cars present at the NEC in Birmingham. This was partly due to the addition of the Piston Heads sports car show. The Piston Heads show had a huge host of Porsche, Ferrari, Lotus and Lamborghini sports cars. There was even a display of every single Mitsubishi Evo car that has thus far being produced! Other highlights of the Autosport Show was the newly liveried Le Mans spec Aston Martin's. Celebrating the 40th anniversary since the iconic Gulf Oil liveried Ford GT40's of the 1960's. Gulf Oil are now main sponsors of this years GT1 title defending Aston Martin's.

Another welcome addition to this years Autosport Show was a large and emotional tribute to the late, great Colin McRae. Many of his most recognizable rally cars were also on display - including the very Subaru in which he won his only World Rally Championship title in 1995. Each year the F1 Racing magazine creates a complete display of all the current F1 cars. In previous years this has been achieved by re-creating iconic racing circuit corners - these have previously been based on Monaco and Monza circuits. This year the display recreated a full pit lane experience, with each car positioned outside of mock pit lane garages. And for an extra special treat the newly created Force India F1 team officially launched their new F1 car at the Autosport Show.

After such a long day, (and countless miles being walked!) It was a pleasant surprise to find that it was, and had indeed being snowing outside of the NEC. Although the added snow ended a wonderful day at the show, it did make the long walk back to the car very very cold!!

So now at least I'm back home and slowly warming up - hopefully in time for the next event! Although this has not been decided yet, keep your eyes on the website to find out.

Paul...

Website Update 2.0.2

I hope everyone has had a pleasant 2008 - so far! This week as promised I have spent my time updating the website, originally the plan was to add a 5 star rating system to all of the photograph previews, allowing everyone to rate each photo. Unfortunately the 3rd party company that I was using have had their severs down for the past few days. Without any idea of when their servers will be back up and running I have decided to remove this feature from my website pages. If it isn't going to work perfectly then I don't want it on my website - Period.

Apart from removing this feature from the web pages I have revamped the main web pages. Before the latest update the main pages used frames to create the layout of the pages. But I have realised that many people appear to only be directed to one of the two-framed pages. Thus I fear that many people visiting the site have been unable to access any of the photographs. If this is the case I am extremely sorry. Now the website layout has removed the need for the frames, meaning that all of the information and links will always be displayed to every single visitor to the site.

Anyway, with a week left until the 2008 Autosport International Car Show I would like to remind everyone that I will be present, and the latest batch of super car and supporting girls will be uploaded onto the site under a new "Autosport International Show" category. One of the highlights of this years show is going to be a tribute to the late and great Colin McRae. As well as this the first public appearance of the new Force India F1 team will be made, with many of the current F1 drivers making appearances at the show.

For more information about the show visit www.autosport-international.com

Many Thanks,

Paul...