Camel and Ostrich Racing at Turf Paradise

Every year Turf Paradise in Phoenix offers up camel and ostrich racing, this time between races six and seven.  Oh yes, there was horse racing too. 

Eric Wilson from Indianapolis

While shooting near the paddock area where the horses and jockeys come out, I talked with a nice fellow with a camera.  He is Eric Wilson from Indianapolis, who was in town on vacation.  Eric told me he primarily photographed weddings and portraits so he wanted to know what type of settings worked best at the racetrack. 

Great question!  It made me stop and think what settings I prefer when photographing at Turf Paradise. 

I use a Canon 5D Mark III and my lens of choice today was the Canon 70-300mm.  I brought along the Tamron 1.4x extender, which I ended up not using very much.  The 300mm was reach enough.  My normal perch is in the upper deck, in the shade (it was hot and sunny). 

I tended to shoot wide-open f/2.8 or so, ISO 100, and 1/1000 of a second shutter speed to freeze the action.  On a few of the shots I used MacPhun’s Focus2Pro (to add bokeh or out of focus to some elements) and SnapHeal Pro (to get rid of extraneous objects in the photo).  On a few other photos I used both Photomatrix Pro and Google’s HDR Efex program.  I will tell you sometimes when I’m not all that happy with a shot, I apply some HDR toning to see if I can save it!

Next up for me is shooting the Cave Creek Rodeo again, then the North Valley Relay for Life located on the Paradise Valley Community College campus.

Until My Next Adventure, 

See You On Down The Road!

Jim Patterson

A short video clip here... 

And, here are all of my photos from Turf Paradise!