Opening Night
Andy Loden - Hickory Motor Speedway
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
Tonight was the opening of regular season racing at the Hickory Motor Speedway. Tonight's races included Limited Late Model, Pro-4, Super Trucks, Late Models, and Street Stocks.
Today was my first trip to the speedway this season. I arrived early, as I always do, because I wanted to photograph qualifying to experiment with panning. I wanted to find out where my shutter speed needed to be in order to get consistent pans on this race track. When I walked in the track, the very first thing I noticed was their lovely new addition of a fence about 8-feet tall around the infield. Most of the infield locations where I like to shoot are now inaccessible as far as photography is concerned. Shooting racing through a fence isn't like shooting baseball through a fence. It's quite impossible. The only spot I saw where I thought I could work was in the entry to turn one. I set up there and photographed all 60 drivers in an effort to find my panning groove. After everything was said and done, I learned that 1/100" in shutter priority mode is where I needed to be. I'm close enough to the racing at this spot that I shoot with my 24-70 lens. HERE are all of those panning shots of drives during the qualifying laps if you want to browse them...