About the Site.... So why is the site called Top End Tales then? Well when I first started the site back in 1998 things were very different. I was not involved in Eurodragster and photography was just a hobby. My favourite place to watch the racing from was (and still is for that matter) right by the finish line. There is usually more space available down at the finish line and you get to see dial - ins unwind and the Super class racers playing games with one another coming up to the stripe. There is also no finer sound at the strip than a pair of blown Pro Mod's screaming through the top end. Armed with a little web knowledge from my day job, a cheap scanner and a bundle of enthusiasm this web site was born. Not content with just photos I took inspiration from Tim Baggaley's top quality and highly amusing race reports in Custom Car and started writing race reports in my own particular style. Some found it funny, some found it offensive (particularly Fuel Funny car teams who were a favourite target for constant lack of performance), there was no sitting on the fence that's for sure. That meant I had photographs from the Top End and race reports (or Tales of the racing if you will) and that's where the original name for the site came from. Then in early 1999 I was invited to join the staff of Eurodragster and jumped at the chance. As anyone in the racing scene knows, Eurodragster has grown far beyond what we could have imaged back in 1999 but that has meant more work. The first change for this site was me relocating myself from the Top End to the start line as it is much easier to get interesting / spectacular pictures there. It also made more sense in terms of being closer to my Eurodragster Partner Tog who can be found beavering away up in race control, producing the top class live reports Eurodragster is so well known for. About a year after relocating to the start line the digital revolution started to sweep through photography in a big way but I wasn't bothered, I had a hundred reasons why it would be no good for me, I was a die hard, I was sticking to my much loved EOS 3 and 35mm film. Then Trevor who was on the firecrew at the time and is now a paramedic leant me a Canon D30 for a day. A week later all my savings had disappeared and a brand new Canon D60 digital SLR was in my camera bag. I never shot another frame of 35mm film at the track! With the freedom to shot without worrying about processing costs I went from maybe 180 frames in a 3 day meeting to anything up to 1000. There is no monetary cost to digital processing but as I found out, you have to invest a lot of time in it. With the race reports already taking me up to 16 hours to actually write something had to give and it was the race reports that went to free up time for the photography and post event processing. So there you have it, the story as to why Top End Tales, contains no Top End stuff and no Tales! Regular readers will have noticed that several sections of the site have been dropped in the overhaul at the end of the 2005 season. The Guestbook was just a pain that was open to being spammed and or abused so that had to go. The links page was unnecessary when Eurodragster has such a comprehensive links library and the videos, well I hadn't shot a new video in 3 years. I learnt that you could either shoot stills, or video but not both, they really are two very separate disciplines. Stills photography has always been my first love so that's the direction I choose to go in. With the video's being so old I took the decision to remove them to free up some server space. I have also archived all the galleries prior to 2004 for the same reason. Well the above takes you to Topendtales 2.0. We are now in Topendtales 3.0! A lot happened during 2007 for both me personally and the site, none of it good! I was taken ill a couple of weeks before the Easter Thunderball 2007 and was finally diagnosed with ME / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in late May or early June of 2007. I attempted to go to the Main Event but lasted one sportsman qualifying session before becoming very poorly and having to come home. That single session of qualifying was the only racing I saw all year. That left the site in a dormant state and then in September 2007 I finally lost the free web hosting that I have enjoyed for the last 5 or 6 years. With the site at the time about 2gig in size that presented a major problem as there is no way I could afford to pay for the sort of hosting package the site need. However, all is not lost! Thanks to the guys I have been working with on the Superchargedimages.com project Topendtales has been reborn as version 3.0. I have had to lose all the old galleries for now but the long term plan is to try and bring them back into the site when time and space permits. For 2008 things will be a little different than previously, I am still suffering from the ME, but recovering slowly. Realistically I am at least a year away from a full recovery but I am at least able to go to the track for short periods now. This means that there should be galleries from most race meetings, but they will not be the comprehensive galleries of past years. At the moment I cannot spend all day track side like I used to, an hour or two here and there is about it sadly. Still, I figured some photo's are better than no photo's at all! I must say a huge thank you to all the racers, crew, track crew, commentators, other photographers and of course my old mates at Eurodragster who have all made me feel very welcome indeed on my return to the track About Me.... For those of you that want to know a little about me... I been a regular
at the Drags for approx 17 years now. I am 37 years old and currently
live on my own (where are all the female race fans?) in the Bedford
area. My other interests include Photography, Video Games, Music,
building model kits and American Muscle Cars (preferably Mopars) and
making a prat of myself on the dance floor at dinner dances! Finally, why the nickname Sharkman? Well its all to do with a hat that I used to wear at the track, before getting involved with Eurodragster. A big, shark shaped hat... For those of you that are familiar with it, yes I still have it, but its old and a bit worn out now. Maybe it has one more trip to the track left in it, we will see.
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