I decided this year to head up north to Bancroft, Ontario to try get some coverage of the Rally of the Tall Pines. The weekend quickly degraded into more ‘party’ than ’spectate an event’ but before it did completely I did manage to put up with standing around for 3 stages to snap some shots.

I’ll preface this post by saying I was a bit disappointed at the experience of shooting a rally. Definitely not for lack of excellent driving on the part of the teams, but even with a media pass it was quite hard to get the angles and locations I felt would result in killer shots. The course is obviously quite large, and hauling gear through the woods wasn’t exactly a fun experience.

The end result is you wind up with a LOT of shots of different cars all hitting the same corners in the same way at slightly different speeds. Unless someone (hopefully doesn’t) crash, you really don’t get to see much variety or much driving really. I’d happily wait for 3 hrs to see a car fly by for 25seconds if it was Colin though…

That’s not a reflection though on the effort the drivers and teams were putting in, as this Lancer shows as it bounces off the guardrail (see bits of the cornerlight fall away).

I hauled my ass further up the course to try and get some different angles, and got some shots I was happy with in the end. I really love this one of the NOS EvoX as it rounds a corner off into the distance.

I’ll let the photos speak for themselves from here on in as I really wasn’t following the competition much anyways. It’s a very disparate form of motorsport to watch in person.  Still, badass cars doing badass speeds on dirt roads is pretty sweet to see. Enjoy!

Unfortunately one of the (many many) WRX’s wound up going off the course at the bridge. The wheels locked up it looked like and the car was carrying too much speed to power into the left hand turn.

After the driver & co-driver made sure that the next cars would know enough to slow down and not repeat their mistake, right into them, they hustled back to the car in order to solve their predicament…

Trying to hitch a ride proved challenging. About a half a dozen cars (many Subarus!) drove by without stopping to help. Understandable really, but still, where’s the honor!?

Finally a compassionate Focus stopped to drag the stranded Subie out of the ditch and they were both on their way!

That’s all. Next Rally I goto will likely be in the USA as I think the event will be set up and run a bit better from what I’ve been told. It’s no reflection on the event in general, I was just expecting more perhaps from it. Still, worth going to if you’ve got nothing else to do on that weekend!