Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Start Your Engines

DAY 108

18 APR 09

On Day 108, my family went to the NHRA Southern Nationals at the Atlanta Dragway in Commerce, GA. It was my first time at an NHRA-sanctioned race, and let me tell you, it was LOUD. Loud, but very cool.

After the Top Fuel qualifiers, we got up to stretch our legs and took a walk through the pits. We saw a bunch of cars, a bunch of crews working on those cars, and a couple of drivers. This particular funny car is driven by Tony Pedregon. We stood and watched his crew work on the car a few minutes -- until they all began to don gas masks. At that point, we put our earplugs in and started backing way.

This photo was the only one I was able to grab after they fired the engine up. Just that couple seconds to hit the shutter, then I had to go. The fumes were killing me.

Personally, I love the capture of the smoke in the air and the tire in motion.

Post-processing: noise reduction, sharpening, curves adjustment.

3 comments:

  1. Great picture. I'm a NASCAR guy myself but if there is rubber, gas, oil, and loud noise around...it can't be all bad. ;)

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  2. LOL. We watch a lot of NASCAR around here. We also hit the Saturday night races at our local dirt track pretty regularly. Now I can add NHRA drag races to my list. ;)

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  3. So cool that you got to go and had such a great time at the races. Great capture on the smoke in this photo, too!

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