Ich kopier einfach mal meinen Thread aus nem englischen Forum hier rein..
ZitatAlles anzeigenSo,
I remember someone asking me a while ago to make a thread about my Gatebil trip when I mentioned I would be going... now, that was a few months ago and the trip did happen in July. I was a bit down because of something that happened on the way back, and also had to wait a bit until the pictures I shot for Performance BMW magazine were published, but now I can finally share my trip with you.
I went with two other photographers, Scott Paterson from Scotland (http://www.patersonphoto.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/scottpatersonphoto) and Tim Schulz from Germany (https://www.facebook.com/tisautomotive), both good friends of mine. Going to Gatebil has been a dream for all us for some time and this year we finally made it come true.
Scott flew over to Germany from Scotland and I picked him up at Düsseldorf Airport on Wednesday afternoon, July 9th. We went to bed early as we wanted to get an early start the next day as we were looking at a 1400 km journey (about 870 Miles).
The next day, we stuffed my car full with our stuff and went on to pick up Tim in Essen. Together with Tim's stuff it was a very tight squeeze, but we managed and set out.
Stopped a few hundred kms later in Denmark for a rest stop.
Set out again and a bit later we came upon the first of two impressives bridges - the Storebæltsbroen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Belt_Fixed_Link
After that we traveled for a few more hours until we came upon this sign... we were close to Sweden now and the sign proclaimed there to be an Airport nearby...
Airport indeed!!! Plane flying right over our heads, hah.
Shortly after, we came into a long tunnel...
When we exited it, this is what we saw... we had arrived at the second impressive bridge, the Øresundsbroen! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98resund_Bridge
It was flanked by a huge off shore wind energy park to the right... windmills as far as the eye cann see!
Hello Sweden!
Yeah, Sweden indeed... Ikea and lots of Volvos and beautiful scenery!
We stopped for some rest in Sweden, we still had a few hundred kilometers to go until we hit Norway, after all. Luckily, the Rudskogen racetrack is not very far behind the border. After this rest stop I took over driving again, so I'm afraid I don't have any more pics of the travels...
But let's not linger too long at this rest stop, ugh!
We arrived at Gatebil right around 2:00 at night. The main entrance was already closed and we wouldn't be able to pick up our press tickets until it opened again, so we were told to stick to one of the public camp sites for the time being. We arrived, Tim set up his tent and Scott and I each built up a bed on the front seats of the E39. Just as we tried to sleep, the people to our left began honking around with a air horn... and the people to our right answered. This went on for a whole hour. TOOOOOT. TOOOOOOOOT.
I couldn't sleep and managed to catch up with a friend who had arrived quite a few hours earlier than us and who basically managed to reserve a camp spot for us right behind the Monster Energy guys, just a few short meters away from the track, whoop! Needless to say, we headed up there the next morning.
This covers the journey to Gatebil... I will get started with Day 1 of the event in a second post - stay tuned.
- - - Aktualisiert - - -
Teil 2
ZitatAlles anzeigen
Friday - 10th July 2014
After we had moved our behinds to our new camp spot behind the Monster Energy area, we went and got our meda vests and immediately set out for a walk around the track. Neither of us had ever been to Gatebil before. Our only knowledge of the event came from Youtube and mainly from Speedhunters coverage. We knew it would be big. We knew it would be insane. We thought we were prepared.
Simply put, we were not prepared at all for this. My face started hurting just a few minutes in from grinning so much and having to pick my jaw up off the floor so often.
If you have never been to Gatebil before - it WILL simply overload your mind.
On the short walk from our camp spot to the pit lane, we stumbled upon these gems already.
We finally got a look at the on track action...
We crossed over to the infield of the track.
And we started crawling around the woods.
A few meters later, I split off from Scott as I had spotted a path leading deeper into the woods and wanted to explore a bit. Tim had split off earlier as well. I kind of got lost in the woods... so there I was, stumbling around a dark forest, seeing nothing but trees and hearing nothing but roaring engines, backfires and squealing tires, all accompanied by the smell of pine trees and burnt rubber.
I stumbled upon a clearing from which you had a nice view of one of the infield corners... too bad I didn't bring a longer lens, or this would've been a nice unique spot to shoot from.
I managed to find my way back to the track, and slowly worked my way around.
Now, what you may or may not know about Gatebil is that the track action is non-stop from when the track opens at 08:00 until the track closes at 20:00 (10:00 to 17:00 on sunday), with car classes (i.e. amateur drifting, pro drifting, time attack, time attack extreme) being switched out on the fly. When the time attack cars in the last few pictures cleared off the track, it was silent for a few minutes. I started wondering what was going on... until I heard the mighty scream of a V8 raping the rev limiter. Now, let me tell you this one thing... the only drift event I've ever attended was in 2009 at the Nürburgring. And let me tell you - the German drift scene... frankly, it sucks. Many of the drivers have no balls, the cars largely have no style and it's just plain boring for a spectator. I've never seen 'real' drifting in the flesh until I attended Gatebil. Heralded by the V8 scream, Vaughn Gittin jr. came flying around the corner with incredible amounts of smoke billowing out... and shortly after followed a whole host of other incredible drivers. Let me tell you... that guy, Fredric Aasbo? He is effing NUTS. Seeing it on youtube is one thing, but seeing him with just a few meters distance, flying sideways down a straight away, flip the car into a corner, drift in between two other drifting cars while making them look like they're standing still and seamlessly transferring to the next corner... pure insanity.
At times, I could not see anything else BUT smoke.
The Moviebird is certainly an impressive piece of kit! Takes a crew of 4 or 5 to operate this thing, from what I saw.
We went back to our camp to regroup, then got invited to hang out at the Speedhunters booth by Alok... we brought our Laptops and proceeded to empty our memory cards.
Now, a flashback to when we first arrived at the track... we went to grab our media vests and spotted a guy with really long dreadlocks walking in front of us... I was like, "Is that Magnus Walker?" Tim and Scott thought so too, but we quickly lost sight of him.
Now, imagine our surprise: We were just quietly moving importing our photos when suddenly somebody pulls up a chair next to where we were sitting, and mumbles a "Oh that's a nice shot!" while munching on an apple. Who else would it be, but Magnus Walker? Genuinely nice guy and full of passion! Had a nice chat with him.
After that I did some rather aimless wandering around and snapped a few more impressions.
After this picture, my batteries died and I discovered that I had left my charged spares in the car. I called it a day as the track was closing down in a few minutes anyways and just went back to our camp, emptied my memory cards and just talked to people and made new friends.
Stay tuned for day 2 which will bring us to the time attack paddock, the show & shine area at the go-kart track and the powerslide competition!
- - - Aktualisiert - - -
Teil 3
ZitatAlles anzeigenOkay, so I got another handful of pictures from Day 1 for you.
Tomorrow I'll follow up with day 2!
- - - Aktualisiert - - -
Teil 4
ZitatAlles anzeigen
So, let's carry on with day 2 then.
Saturday kicked off with lots of this going on:
I already sad that our camp spot was behind the Monster Energy guys but I think I forgot to mention that directly behind us was the burnout pit. That meant waking up to lots of VRAAAA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BA and SQUEEEEEEEEEEE every morning.
First things first, we set out for a walk over to the Go-Kart track, which is where the car show would be held... our path took us through the paddock, so of course I snapped some pics.
We arrived at the car show... Our main objective was to find a few cars for magazine (Performance BMW) or blog (my own, www.tiefundbreit.com) features. Sadly, there weren't very many owners at their cars, so we resorted to just leaving cards... In the end we found a few cars to shoot, which I will show you later.
Some of the stuff at the car show was this:
We managed to set up shoots with 3 of the cars there... two BMWs, which we shot for Performance BMW magazine and one Mercedes which I shot for my blog, Tief & Breit. Scott managed to shoot a bagged E28 5-series on red OZ Breyton wheels, which I don't have any pics of apart from this...
Together we shot this E46 Touring...
And I set up a shoot with this Mercedes S204 later that evening... read the feature here: http://www.tiefundbreit.com/bl…ss-act-davids-w204-wagon/
After our trek across the go kart track, we headed back towards the race track, this timing walking through the time attack paddock... I know I promised you some pics, but somehow it seems I forgot to take some, as the only one in my library is this... a Subaru Impreza we stubled upon, which Scott got really excited about as it turns out that he's familiar with the car as the shop that built and runs it is just 5 minutes from his home! Talk about a small world!
But now, back on track for us!
Went off track for a bit again...
But returned to the track when it was time for the powerslide competion (called 'Breisladd')
After that, I shot the Mercedes I showed you earlier. When that was done, I went back to the paddock and also shot the Monster Energy E46 in the burnout pit. This was also for a Performance BMW feature.
After that, just some of the usual memory card emptying and then we hung out with a few of the new friends we made and went to a party.
We had survived the second day of Gatebil.
Ein Teil folgt noch...
Super geschrieben und Wahnsinns Bilder! Gerne mehr von sowas! Finde die alten Volvos so geil 
Die knallen da einfach LKW Turbos rein usw 
