I’m used to taking photos of things that stand relatively still. Buildings don’t move at all, & most of the people I’m photographing are not really moving around much. I renewed my respect for sports photographers when I had the opportunity to photograph a NASCAR race up close & personal. Virtually EVERYTHING is moving & moving fast! The cars zoom past at nearly 200mph & the pit crews are sprinting to minimize the amazingly short time the cars stay in the ‘garage’. Here Kurt Busch gets a set of four tires & fuel during his 10 seconds or so in the pit.

Here Dale Earnhardt Jr speeds past. I was tracking the car as it moved & the movement you see in everything else happened in 1/250th of a second.

This afternoon I was fortunate to have a “HOT” pass to the NASCAR race at the Texas Motor Speedway. It was way cool! With that credential you can pretty much go anywhere. I watched in the garage as the cars were measured & tested. It turns out the garage was a great place to be because it rained all day long. And for some reason, the drivers don’t race in the rain. Pretty understandable actually; I don’t suppose I would really want to drive 200mph on wet roads on tires as slick as dancing shoes. So as it turned out the only car on the track today was the pace car. Waiting patiently for the rain to pass.

This past Saturday I went out to the “Lone Star Rod & Kustom Roundup” here in Austin Texas and took a few photographs. Ok, I actually took a few hundred… So many amazing cars that just screamed for a bit of photo magic! Here is a ’57 Caddy that to my eye looks like it could have walked right out of the animated movie “Cars”. Beautiful!