Retro Cannonball 2026 aka my first car photoshoot
You know that I usually photograph trips, concerts, and the like, but in June I decided to try photographing cars.
Cannonball came to Waterford for the first time. This is an event that is held to support charities – every year and probably every route supports a different charity. This event in June donated money to the Ronald McDonald House charity which helps families who have children chronically ill or hospitalized by providing facilities for the family.
Cannonball has two events – modern luxury cars like Lamborghini and retro cars that came to us. I think this is a purely Irish thing, because the cars always leave from some point in Ireland. And the route is planned with stops in different parts of Ireland so that the locals can admire the cars and donate to the charity.
It’s a different route every time. Modern cars haven’t been in Waterford before and retro cars were here for the first time. The weather was pretty good that day, so I went to the city where the whole event took place. The cars were supposed to arrive at 5 pm, park in the square for about an hour and then leave for a local hotel. Well, they were almost an hour late and stayed in the square for about half an hour. What I also regretted was that they were supposed to have Brazilian dancers with them, but I guess they only use them for modern cars.
There is a pedestrian zone leading to the square, which the organizers had enclosed with iron barricades, behind which people stood to watch all the cars enter. At first I thought I would stand at the beginning, because there was a hill leading to it (i.e. the cars were going downhill), but since they turned right under the hill onto the square, I wondered if the cars wouldn’t be too crowded. In the end, I stood closer to the square – so in the photos, in addition to the cars, I have people, trees, and a nice building in the background.
And it was a good decision, because some cars were piling on each other and others stopped in front of me so that the driver and passenger could spray the spectators with water guns. One driver also drifted on purpose, almost tearing my ears off and leaving tire tracks behind. The weather was crazy that day – between the gray sky and the occasional sun, the light reflected off the car hoods was quite a feast. I forgot the filter for my lens at home, so I edited everything manually in Lightroom 🤡 at this point I mainly took pictures of the whole cars and if I had time, some details. I took pictures with my 18-135mm lens and an aperture of about f8.
After all the cars arrived at the finish line, the spectators ran away to look at the cars. Our square is small and certainly not used as a parking lot, so almost a hundred cars had their bumpers stuck on top of each other. It was pretty bad to take pictures. I know I managed to get some good pictures, but because of the small place and the many people and especially the lack of time in the end, I didn’t manage to do much.
I tried to take pictures of details – car interiors, door handles, interesting stickers, front and rear lights with the car brand name or perhaps curves. For some cars, these attributes were the biggest. For this, I changed my lens to 24-70 mm and took pictures at the largest f2.8. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch all the cars and ended up running to the Quay to catch them leaving for the hotel.
In this case, I’m not happy with the photos for two reasons – there was a haze, so the sky was mostly white, and part of the Quay by the river goes through a construction, so there’s iron fencing everywhere. Great place for photos. But while I was editing the photos, another trend appeared on Instagram, called pixel stretching. I immediately tried it on a few of these photos and it covered the ugly background on the Quay.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and went to the hotel where the participants were staying. There is a large parking lot at the hotel, where almost everyone left their cars. I wasn’t the only one who had that idea, so for about another hour I avoided a few people while we all tried to take pictures of as many cars as possible. There was more space here, but most of the area around the parking lot is eww, so the background of some of the photos is not exactly ideal. Again, I focused on the details of the individual cars and in some cases I also incorporated the Waterford Walls paintings, which are located on the buildings nearby.
Overall, I have to say that it was a great experience. I was a bit disappointed with the weather (sky and light) and the space, but it’s a nice challenge to work with what’s given. I’m happy with a few photos and I don’t think I took the worst pictures of the cars. But I certainly wouldn’t make a living from it. On the other hand, the modern Cannonball will be in Kilkenny in September and I’m already thinking about going to take pictures hihi
