Jeff Gordon during "happy hour" practice for the big boys who race on Sundays. In the pic with the American flag he could seemingly be parked at a standstill. In the closer pic only the blurred tires give away the fact that he is rolling at all.
Contender Kevin Harvick (33) fights through heavy traffic. Harvick would eventually place 3rd. Again though, how can one tell they aren't simply on a parade lap or under caution?
I managed to get two fairly dynamic shots of track workers. The flag man waving his green flag is a sight that every racing fan loves to see. And I tried to create a sense of the cars blasting past by lowering my shutter speed and catching the blur of a car going by a stationary person, in this case a cameraman who may have just taken a photo of the same car. Nice lens there buddy, but personally I'd rather have a Corvette for the same cash.
I named this one "Race Behind The Race" because these two cars are fighting for position in the pit lane. #20 Joey Logano was the eventual race winner, and as mentioned above, #33 Kevin Harvick came in 3rd. At this point they were fighting for first place, whoever got back on track first would lead the race. This is an unusually cropped photo for me, I didn't like it in a standard aspect ratio. The wide, flat format seems to have more life and less wasted space than anything else I could come up with, and the viewer's eye is (hopefully) drawn to the dramatic body language of the pit crew members as they struggle to get their car away first. Please click on this image (indeed, all of them) for a full size version.
#62 had scraped against the concrete retaining wall and his paint and bodywork were worse for wear. This one seems to have more movement to me, I particuarly like how the horizontal silver scratches on the car mesh and contrast with the blurred horizontal greys of that visually annoying fence between the subject and the camera.
I really like "Backstretch Warp Drive". I bumped my shutter speed all the way down to 1/30th of second and simply panned along with the cars while leaning on the shutter button. Of the five frames that the camera took in that burst, this was the only one in which the cars were in focus, but I only needed one photo like that! An unintended but amusing feeling I get when looking at this one is that the drivers have invaded an impressionist painting from the early 20th century.
And we have a winner! #20 Joey Logano crosses the finish line, and the flag man did a poor job of modeling for me, choosing to hold the flag down low where my camera couldn't see it. Bad flag man! Next race hold it over your head like you did with the green one!
Young Mr. Logano celebrates his win in the time honored fashion of redlining his engine and annihilating his rear tires. When I was his age I thought all the girls loved burnouts too.
Hope you enjoyed my attempts at capturing this race. If I had press credentials and freedom of movement I could have done much better, but considering I took all these from one seat in the stands, I think there is a decent amount of variety to them.
