Tar Barrel Mayhem!

Gandhi

Gandhi

Messages
4,666
Edit My Images
Yes
Well, I'll tell the story first......

Me and Kell decided to shun the normal 'standing in a wet field going ooooh!' kind of november the fifth this year. Instead we thought we'd drive 120 miles to stand in a town square occupied with lord knows how many people, whilst crazy cidered up locals charged around the place with giant flaming barrels on their backs. Imagine somewhere between apocalypse now and a sardine canning factory with extreme alcohol consumption thrown in and you might be close!

This was the first time out with the new camera and these are the results... ther's quite a few so I hope you don't mind....

barrelers_group.jpg


barrelwoman1.jpg


bonfire_silhouette.jpg


boy_barreler.jpg


Boy_barrels_1.jpg


children.jpg
 
IanC_UK said:
Great shots, all i can say is, they are bl**dy bonkers ! lol
Click to expand...

Couldn't have put it better myself
 
IanC_UK said:
Great shots, all i can say is, they are bl**dy bonkers ! lol
Click to expand...


bonkers is even in the same country! brilliant fun though.....

tricky nights photography but I think the new cam, 15yr old flashgun and my nerves held up quite well.

Out of over 200 shots they were the best. I think I must have about 180 shots of the back of peoples heads and blurry barrel action!
 
Nice pics :) really caught the flames well - especially in that kind of light.

BTW what was the death toll?

;)
 
no deaths. Only one barreler injured. Fell over and broke something!

If you look in the second one in the last set, the kid is only about 8!!!!!!!!! they start then and are normally still doing it in their 30's. There are ladies barrels as well. It's a tradition going back some 400 years, supposed to cleanse evil spirits from the streets. it was so packed at some points you had no choice over where you went around the town.

I'm definately going again next year. beats bangers and catherine wheels!
 
totally bonkers!
 
was this down devon way by any chance? I remember friends of mine going to watch people (or silly nutters) running through the streets with burning barrels when I was at Exeter.
 
Oh My God, I knew this was going to be stark raving bionkers but WTF? :nut: :shock:

I honestly admire you for getting so close and having either no sense or much bigger gonads than I will ever have. ;) You have been rewarded with some exciting and original shots that portray the mayhem, madness, danger and confusion that obviously surrounded this whole event. Great shots indeed, nice exposure and well balanced to show the nutters with the barrels while not having the flames cause your pictures to "blow out". When you add into that the old manual flash gun you were using and the fact that it was your first outing with said equipment I really thing you have done excellent and should be really pleased with the results.

Top job mate!!! :thumb:

BTW May I ask you to give some details of what settings you used and how you found the whole photography side of this event? It may hep others in the future.
 
LOL! brilliant! Chap here has just brought in a bit of barrel! Loonies!
 
Also takes place here Allenheads on New years eve. Only been once, had to park about 5 mile away, the place was heaving. Something a little different for New Years Eve! :)
 
The number of the beast!
Great pics by the way. :thumb:
 
some great shots in there, some traditions should be stopped though :nut:
 
Thanks for all the positive comments dudes.

In answer to your questions/statements...

1) yes, it's in south devon, nr exeter.

2) I think some trditions are best preserved. Especially crazy ones like this. In fact I'm surprised the Health and Safety guys haven't got hold of this one yet! There should be more mayhem in the world I think! Too boring otherwise!

3) As for actually photographing the event.... They have seventeen barrels and they are 'sponsored' by the 17 pubs in ottery st mary, they light them outside the pubs and then charge around the streets with them. It was mostly a case of locating the people who'd be carrying them and then elbowing, excuse me'ing and being a bit lairy to get close to them, then waiting for the barrel. The only problem was, due to the, err, compact? nature of the crowds, you could see the barrel coming from about 100yds away, but as people dived out of the way the carrier tended to veer from side to side, so it wasn't until they were about 10 feet away you'ld know exactly where they'd be. Then about 5 seconds to focus and shoot and RUN AWAY!!!!!!! me and my mates got shouted at a couple of times for being in the way!

Generally, I set the flash to iso200, 1/4 or 1/16th power. but I had a diffuser made form greaseproof paper over the head, so that toned down the flash quite nicely and took the blue tint off of the light.

Camera settings were, ISO200, shutter priority, set to between 1/125 and 1/360 and aperture of between f2.8 and f4.5. There was a bit of experimentation to start with, but it generally turned out nice. I did start shooting in raw, but discovered that with the flashgun on 1/16th and the camera on jpeg/low speed burst, I could get 3 frames over about 1.5 seconds. Seemed to work a bit better considering the situation.

There were so many people there with proper Dslr's, point and shoots and camera phones, It started to get quite competitive at some points. Glad I'm not a Papparazzo! Although I did find it strangely enjoyable.

Just got to wait to re-grow my eyebrows now. The nasal and ear hair I can live without ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top