It was fan
appreciation day at Turf Paradise
Saturday 20 April. The weather was
perfect, sunny, in the upper 80s, and the track isn’t that far from where I
live. Turf Paradise is a very
customer-centered business, so I knew I’d get cheap beer, great hot dogs, and
photo opportunities.
On this day,
they had a spot on the track apron for some of the jockeys
to sign autographs and get their photos taken.
There were some interesting faces here.
One thing I would have done differently was to take my flash with me for
fill, but thankfully Lightroom 4 has a shadows slider that can
take care of some of those nasty Arizona shadows.
For the
close up portraits, I used my brand new Canon
17-40mm “L” class lens with my Canon 5D Mark III. For the track shots from up above in stands,
I used a Canon
70-300mm “L” lens with the same 5D body.
For some of the shots I took from across the track, I did some cropping
but could get away with that because of the 22 megapixel full frame sensor on
the 5D. I think next time I’ll bring out
my big boy Tamron
200-500mm lens. That one is a heavy
weight so I might have to bring my monopod.
That’s all
for now,
And happy
shooting!
Jim
Patterson
Here are all the photos from fan appreciation day from
Flickr