Fan Appreciation Day at the Track

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

http://JamesGordonPatterson.com

Here are all the photos from fan appreciation day from Flickr