Most people who come to this site, are no doubt aware that most of the photos on here are for sale. There are a couple of exceptions for legal reasons, but at least 99% of the photos on this site are available for purchase.

However, sales of photos alone doesn't keep this site online. Our traffic costs are constantly increasing, with traffic regularly hitting 70 gigabytes per month during racing season.

One way to ensure the site continues in it's present form, is to donate with PayPal.

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I've just added three new galleries to the site, the December 2012 Nitro Funny Car meeting and January 2013 Night of Fire 1 meeting from the Perth Motorplex, as well as the Cranksters Rod and Kustom Club's 2013 Hot Summer Nights.

Click through the links below to see the photos
December 2012 Nitro Funny Cars
January 2013 Night of Fire 1
2013 Cranksters Hot Summer Nights

I've been a little slack getting new photos onto the website lately. But I've recently added a few new albums and am planning on catching up on a little more work over the next couple of weeks.

Here are 3 new albums I've just added..
2012 December 14th Fast Friday
2012 Badass Burnouts (and Freestyle Motocross)
2012 Burnout Masters

My wife, Kate, and I have recently returned from a short holiday in Phuket. This was our first time in Thailand, and also our first holiday since both our wedding and the birth of our daugher, Mikah. There were so many enjoyable moments while we were there, that picking out 10 photos was a bit of a challenge. There are many more photos from the trip in my flickr account here. In the mean time, these are 10 of my favourite shots from the trip.



After landing at Phuket airport, we caught a taxi down to the first of two hotels, the Paragon, at the northern end of Patong Beach. We quickly headed for the pool, checked out the pool bar, then got ready to hit town for dinner.



No sooner had we left the hotel, than it started to rain. Thinking this was just going to be a quick tropical blast, we decided to keep walking. By the time we found shelter, we were absolutely drenched and were questioning our own sanity. However, once we did find shelter, we also found a nice little food hall where we had dinner. By the time we were finished dinner, we'd dried off enough to keep on walking and ended up making it to the Jungeylon shops where we did a spot of shopping, picked up a few supplies we hadn't bothered bringing on the plane and then caught a tuk tuk back to the Paragon.

Phuket is definitely alive with building activity at the moment. From small sets of villas to apartment buildings like this one. wherever you head, you'll pass several construction projects along the way. As you can see here, scaffolding methods, or more precisely, materials, are a little different here to those in Australia.

The outdoor bars in the OTOP Markets are a relaxing place for a cold drink or three during an afternoon exploring Patong. The markets are a short walk south of the popular Jungceylon shopping complex in the middle of Patong, and the market stalls here are a lot cheaper than those in the Junceylon basement, although the night markets in Phuket Town seem to be where the real bargains can be found.

We headed a little out of Patong, down to the Kok Chang elephant park, where Kate and I took the time to get up close and personal with an elephant.

The Wat Chalong temples in Phuket Town are an impressive sight, and of course, crowded with tourists. The Wat Chalong temple is considered the most important of the 29 Buddhist temples in Phuket. This photo is not of the main temple, but of a smaller temple in the complex.

One of my favourite meals of the trip was also the cheapest. 440 baht for barbecued catfish, chicken and pork, with a side of salad and some fried rice, two cokes and a king brown of Chang beer.

That night we headed to the weekend night markets in Phuket town, where I couldn't resists sampling some of the local delicacies, in particular, the deep fried insects on offer.

This is why we were there, highschool friends of my wife Kate, Marcus and Danelle, had chosen Thailand as the place they wanted to get married. Danelle was one of Kate's bridesmaids at our wedding, and we were honoured to be invited to join them in Phuket for their wedding.



Not that there's really room for error when you're landing jet aircraft anyway, but Phuket international airport really stresses the point.



Now we're back in Australia, back to our respective day jobs, with the usual sides of a lot of motorsport coming up, and a busy family life as well. Much like our previous USA trips, discussions on the next trip started before we'd even landed, although, again, much like the previous USA trips, it's entirely possible that the next trip will be nothing like we thought it would be either.

Toyota's 86, inspired by the legendary AE86 and known across the planet as the GT-86, 86 and Scion FR-S, and also available as the Subaru BRZ, is making it's way to showrooms in Western Australia at the moment. Last week, the All Fours and Rotaries Car Club of WA were lucky enough to get a sneak peak at the 86 when Toyota WA's Adam Song brought the first 86 to hit WA, a red GTS, to their club meeting.



While some of the loyal Toyota fans (myself included) are having trouble getting past over the Subaru boxer motor under the hood, the price is low enough to leave an 86 buyer with a plethora of options to help them get around that little obstacle, from aftermarket exhausts and turbo kits, to complete drive train swaps, with these cars having already received Toyota V8's and turbo 6's.



The build quality and trim is nothing short of Toyota and Subaru's usual levels, with little touches like windows that lower themselves slightly while the doors are open just the icing on the cake.



Although the Toyota 86 has yet to officially hit WA's streets, there's little doubt that we'll soon be seeing this vehicle, and it's stablemate the Subaru BRZ, become fairly prominent in club level motorsport.



Huge thanks go to John Fowler, for keeping the doors open at Wheels World for us to have the meeting. John has been a friend of AFARCC for many years, and has helped me out several times in the past as well.

Like most motorsport people, I love anything loud and fast, and that includes military aircraft. So when the RAAF announced they were running another airshow at RAAF Pearce, north of Perth, I started making plans to get there.



We ended up getting a little delayed, partly due to traffic and partly just due to the usual issues with getting a car packed with stuff for a young family. However, the timing turned out to be pretty good, as we cruised in past a C-130H firing up, and as Kate was busy unpacking the car, I was shooting it taxiing out to the runway to start the afternoons military flying displays.





The RAAF were keen to show off their new C-17A Globemasters, with two aircraft on site, one on static display and the other in the air.



Click on through for more photos

I've been a little slack in updating the front page of the website recently, but I've still been busy taking photos and uploading them for you all to enjoy. Here are a few recent galleries that people have been asking about.



The 'Shows and Cruises' section has been updated with photos from Motorvation 26 (Friday, Saturday and Sunday), Hotrods to Hell at Devilles Pad and from the Burnout King and Burnout Masters events at the Perth Motorplex. The photos from the Cranksters Pipeline Picnic can also be found in the Cruises and Shows gallery.



For the drag racers out there, the Drag Racing 2011/2012 gallery has been updated with the photos from, amongst other events, the 2012 WesterNationals (Saturday and Sunday), the 2012 Nitro Funny Car Fury event, the 2011/12 Perth Motorplex season finals, Nostalgia Drags, ANZAC Day Holden vs Ford and a whole heap of Whoop Ass Wednesday and Fast Friday events.



I've also been busy re-sorting and uploading the photos from our 2010 USA road trip "The Bonneville Run", sorting the photos into galleries for individual cities and events, including Bonneville Speedweek, the ANRA Summer Nationals and the GoodGuys 24th West Coast Nationals in Pleasanton. I've still got a little to go with that gallery, but it's getting there.

It's now a little a month since Kate and I returned from The Bonneville Run, a road trip taking in several states in the USA, during which time we managed to clock up over 5000 miles in my 1970 Cadillac Fleetwood 75. We drove through California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah, seeing plenty of sights and taking plenty of photos along the way. The purpose of this posting is to provide a brief overview of where we went and what we saw, and to hopefully entice you to check out the rest of the stuff I've posted from the trip.



There's a lot more reading and more photos after the jump, but if you'd prefer to just head straight to the gallery from the roadtrip, which contains over 3000 photos, you can find it over in the galleries at LandBarge.com. Alternatively, there is also a blog that I was keeping while we were on the road, which you can find at tbr.landbarge.com.

As some of you already know, I'm currently on the road in the United States of America, on a little trip I'm calling "The Bonneville Run". I'm taking a lot of photos along the way, and writing blog posts whenever I can. Part of this trip involves a visit to the town of West Wendover for the SCTA's Bonneville Speedweek 2010.

Some of the events that we're attending, such as the SCTA's Bonneville Speedweek 2010, the ANRA's Summer Nationals at Famoso Raceway in Bakersfield and the Good Guys 24th West Coast Nationals at Pleasanton, will be getting featured in their own albums here on HighOctanePhotos.com, however, in the meantime, I have an album for a whole heap of photos from the trip over on LandBarge.com, which you can find by clicking here.

You can still order photos as usual from the website, however orders may be delayed a little until I return home in the second week of September. Digital photo orders should be shipped out with little more delay than usual, however prints will take a little longer as normally Kate or myself would pick the prints up and send them out.

After a big weekend of Motorsport for Western Australia, where High Octane Photos covered the Fast Friday at the Motorplex, the Retro Fest for classic speedway and drag racing vehicles on Saturday and Sundays V8 Supercar racing at Wanneroo Raceway, I have uploaded a couple of photo previews to the site while I sort the full coverage.

You can find the Retro Fest preview at:
www.HighOctanePhotos.c...Retro_Fest

And the V8 Supercar preview can be found at:
www.HighOctanePhotos.c.../2009_V8SC

If you like this site and would like to help contribute to it's running costs, there are a number of ways to do so.

The first is to click on the banners and advertising links, or use the Google search box, each time you do one of those, the site earns roughly 1c.

Another is to click on the link that says 'Advertise here' and advertise on the site. The banners cost about US$1.35 a week, and there are 6 slots available for each banner at any one time.

Yet another way to support the site, is to donate with PayPal.

Until further notice, I'm having a special on hi-resolution .jpegs, these are 8.2 megapixel, full original quality, and suitable for printing to A2 (and larger) sizes. As of December 15th, high resolution files are now up to 10.1 megapixels.

Normally these photos cost $50 each, but for the forseeable future, they'll only cost you $40 each if you order 2 or more. Thats 20% off the price of each photo.

To take advantage of this offer, email me at fil@highoctanephotos.com and make sure to mention this deal.

You may have noticed that there are some photos missing from the 'photo gallery' section. This is because those photos are now in their own dedicated galleries, when the site re-structure is complete, there will be dedicated galleries for circuit racing (including drifting), drag racing, photo shoots and wall papers.

The main gallery will remain active with all the other photos. The purpose of the restructure is to reduce the load on the server, as the number of photos in the gallery was rapidly approaching the maximum the site software could handle.

As you may have noticed, I've recently upgraded the website software, and deleted the entire database of photos. The reason for this was that the old setup was starting to get a bit buggy and was losing photos along the way. For example, the last album uploaded to the old site was the 49 photos from the Supra Club of WA cruise on the weekend, of these, only 41 photos displayed.