2005 see's a real renaissance for the Principal of the School of Excellence. Holding the Principle of "A good photographer doesn't show his bad pictures, but the truly great / useless / stupid ones do!" dear to his heart and armed with new technology in the form of a pair of Canon 20D's (instruction manuals? we don't need no stinking instruction manuals) the Principal has embarked on what must be considered as one of his finest years of Photography since the School was founded.

Thankfully the new technology has offered several opportunities for school quality work, with a faster motordrive that's always good for those "finger on the button too long shots" and also as with any digital SLR a flash metering set up that either gets it right or horribly wrong with little in between offering plenty of scope for night time shots. Add these to a new take on old favourites such as "the cutoff", "bloody crew man", "left the camera on and accidentally hit the shutter release" and of course "where did that marshal come from?" and you have a stunning body of work from 2005.

If you wish to enroll in the school then simply email me your finest photo disasters (only one or two please) and a few brief details (including the URL of your website) and if I think they are bad enough I will publish them here for everybody to laugh at I mean admire. Please note that the captions are supplied by the school principal, Sharkman, so by submitting photo's your are exposing yourself to any sort of embarrassing caption!!!!

The Principal in 2005; New Year, New Camera's, Same Photographer, Top Notch results!:

No messing about this year, a March RWYB saw the Principal out testing with the new 20D's and the early results showed plenty of promise with this double cut off shot of Scott Hauser. Could the Principal build on this strong start to the year? You bet he could!

On to the Thunderball and straight into the thick of the action. Steve Johnson starts to get crossed up on an out of shape on the burnout and the Principal is right there to cut the back of the car off. If its going this well when they are burning out then what's it going to be like when they are launching?

Easter also saw the first opportunity to shoot at night. This began a year long love/hate relationship between the Principal and his "trusty" Canon's. As the Principal discovered that the Canon flash metering is, quite frankly, crap. Sometimes its spot on and you get perfect exposures, sometimes its way out and occasionally it decides not to fire the flash at all! Of course all this leads to plenty of scope for School pictures, like this beautifully unlit shot of Lindsay Deuchar launching. Perfect exposure of the front wing, anyway!

One of the hazards of the track side photographer is a strange breed of creature known as a Bob Day (latin name Foolaroundius Maximus). Occasionally Bob sneaks up on you and then looms into view, usually coinciding with the moment you hit the shutter release. Still, at least the flash exposure was correct here.....

Still at the Thunderball and here is the first image produced using the new 20D's that falls into that magical "what the f'ing hell?" category. They are always the same, you never know you have taken them, you download the pictures and start sorting through them and all of a sudden, there it is, a hidden gem just waiting to go into the School.

Its not hard is it? Its a gantry. It doesn't move, it just stays in the same spot. Shouldn't be to hard to get a photo of the scoreboard attached to it should it? This one is so far out of focus that the specks of rubber on the lens are closer to being in focus than the gantry is. Bonus points there for forgetting to clean the lens before starting.

From the Thunderball we move on to Shakey County and the first sighting in 2005 of the "crewman" shot. Here one of Steve Carey's decides he wants some of the limelight.

The Principal should know better than to try and shoot across track. He really should. But no, He just has to ignore all common sense and try anyway. End result? One blurred blob obscuring the subject matter. Good Effort there.

Morale of this story, check exposure settings BEFORE taking picture, not afterwards..... I think that's an artistic ultra wide angle shot of Mike Lacey's Camaro, or it could be a picture of A Bomb testing, not too sure.

We didn't see too much of Stuart Peck and Rat Rage this season, so naturally the Principal made the most of what opportunities he did get to photograph the car. Next year he hopes to get the whole car in shot.

First rule of Press Photography - Always be aware of your surroundings and what's going on. It can save you getting run over by tow cars, save you from walking in front of race cars, enable you to get the shot you want and save you from trying to take a grab shot only to find your view obscured....

Its the Speedfreaks Ball, its a bike and its way to fast for the Principal to keep up with!

Substitute Main Event for Speedfreaks Ball but other than that, see above!

I am sure you have all seen by now the photo sequence of Darryl Bradford Flame Grilling the Wrights Top Fueler at Shakey (Don't think there is any truth in the rumour they were after Burger King Sponsorship) but here's what happens when the Principal suddenly realises that its getting more than a bit hot and ducks for cover without letting go of the shutter release first.

Look, its the Summer Nationals. That is all I know!

The regular trip over to Mantorp Park provided this stunner, I mean look at it, out of focus, a shutter speed waaay too slow, crap on the lens AND a crewman all rolled into one stunning image. If only I had screwed the exposure up as well...

Well, we did pretty well, half way through the season before the first "hit shutter release of camera slung over shoulder" shot of the year. Bonus points to the camera for under exposing the shot into the bargain.

Another one of those magical "WTF?" images, this one was lurking in amongst the Allstar Nationals pictures...

As was this absolutely delightful image! I think this may have been an "inadvertent shutter release" but I'm not sure. It just has everything going for it though, lovely diagonal composition, two cars launching, slow synch flash for speed blur and correct exposure, one of the Principals finest efforts here and one that I know connoisseur of the School John Everitt is really looking forward to seeing.

Now I know that the European Finals was a bit grim weather wise, but it was not this bad. God only knows what this was supposed to be.

The Principal is so used to fuel coupes either being up in smoke or off the throttle by 60 feet that when one actually made it as far as him under power he was totally unprepared for it! Fans of the class, don't worry, the wall got in the way a bit further up the track, thus keeping the string of early shutoffs / aborted runs intact....

Wahey! The Principal, the Canon's and night racing have another spectacular fall out resulting in something that looks like a bad trip captured in photographic form...

A bad trip with a fuel flopper in it. Scarey stuff! Looks like I might have to resort to reading the instruction books that came with the flash guns.....

Back to more traditional forms of screwing up royally here, with a nicely executed double cut off shot, not quite reaching the Holy Grail of cutting the back off one car and the front off the other in the same place so you could put the two bits of car together to make one whole one, but not far off here.

More wheelie bars! This time although blurred and out of focus its possible to tell they belong to Roel Koedam's bike. The Principals only excuse is Roel was threatening the European record and indeed the 5 second barrier every time he ran and the Principal just couldn't keep up with him!

Wow, look at this, a perfectly exposed shot of Roy from the Paramedics' fluorescent jacket! Shame about that totally under exposed dragster in the foreground ruining the picture. Got to love that Canon flash metering.

And we follow that up with a perfectly exposed shot of a pair of headlights. I think it may be Patrik Wikstrom's Pro Mod, but I am really not sure. Who needs flash if the car has its head lights on? Not the Principal, obviously....

It would appear that the Principal is starting to develop a bit of an armco fetish, what other reason can there be for all these stunning shots of the back of the armco at Shakey? Not in the same league as the effort earlier in the year but still a strong contender.

Graham Ellis launches the Super Mod Cutlass into the dark at the National Finals. The camera once again blows the flash exposure totally and the Principal weighs in with some camera shake just for good measure.

Flash? We don't need no stinking flash!

It was taken at the National finals, that's all I can tell you, well that and temptation to use photoshop to draw a smiling mouth underneath was tremendously hard to resist!

Gordon Appleton and team were working hard on the Camaro at the National Finals to try and improve its handling and the way it launched, the main effort being to try and get the car launching flatter and not picking the left front wheel so far up in the air. Always keen to help the Principal shared his images with the team after every run. Surprisingly the team did not find this particular image of much use!

Shakey at Halloween. No matter how many of these images I find on the CF cards they will always have a special place in the School.

It turns out that the Foolaroundius Maximus is a migratory species and it would appear that it heads south for the winter, with Bahrain being a favourite stopping place. After fighting the good fight for over 24 hours with the circuits Press people to even be allowed to stand in the middle of the startline area the Principal was rewarded with this stunning image to round off a quite remarkable year for the School.