Sunday, January 1, 2012

A Day at the Races!




A day at the races!  December 30, 2011 was a beautiful day in Phoenix to go to Turf Paradise, a horse track near 19th Avenue and Bell Road.  I brought my Canon 7D along with one lens, the Tamron 70-200mm and a 1.4x extender. 
  
Checking out the scene, I found getting close to the track would be an odd angle standing just below the dirt track with the rail as an obstruction.  So we went back, but higher, eventually going up to the top of the grandstand to get a view looking below with fewer obstructions.

I took one shot of a horse and rider that was just a tad bit out of focus.  So, I did some cropping and post production in Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Topaz Simplify to get that oil painting look.  I find this technique can help me save an otherwise out of focus useless photo.

On still others here I applied filters from Nik Software’s Color Efex 4 essentially to boost contrast and color. 

On my next visit, I’m going to stand close to the track even if it means I can only get the horses hoofs! 

Remember, when in doubt just shut up and shoot!

Jim Patterson
http://JamesGordonPatterson.com

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