Frank Kimmel Wins His 79th ARCA Race to Tie Iggy Katona For The Most All Time

Last year I photographed my first stock car race from inside the track. I was excited to see a sport up close and personal that I really enjoyed watching several years before. I was big into stock car racing a few years ago, but the crazy new ways they picked to draw fans in pushed me away. The ARCA racing series is kind of your old school racing. They race for points, and the driver with the most points at the end of the season wins the title. No gimmicks, just racing. Going into the race I knew that Frank Kimmel just needed one win to tie for the most all time in series history. In the few weeks leading up to the event I was hoping that he wouldn’t pass up the mark before I was able to see him. Of course during the race I was hoping that he could pull of the win as that would be the biggest story of the day. He did win the race, and I positioned myself in the closing laps to make the image above. I wanted the main grandstands with the Winchester logo in the shot as well as his crew celebrating. I also wanted a perfectly centered shot of the car crossing the finish line, but I was just a bit late on my timing. I still like this photo as it froze a moment in time for me.

Winchester Speedway

This weekend I will once again be at Winchester Speedway. I really wanted to photograph here last year as this track is very close in dimensions to my favorite NASCAR track which is Bristol Motor Speedway. In fact the designers of Bristol took their measurements from this track to build theirs. Winchester is celebrating its 100th anniversary this season. I am very excited to be back at the track photographing again. I have gone through my photos from that first race and analyzed what I did right and wrong. This time around will be less about the awe shucks I am at the track, and more about getting down to the business of making good photos. With a year of shooting under my belt I hope that I can produce some good content. I will post some photos here as well as make another exposure page when I am done going through them all.

Processing This Photo in Lightroom 5

Most racing happens in the harsh mid day sun. They don’t think about the photographers when they schedule these events. I wanted to show the beautiful sky as well as the detail on the faces of the pit crew. In the days of film I really would have had to choose between one of the two or meet in the middle. In the digital age I can pick one, and process for the other. Here it was just a matter of opening up the shadows a bit, and bringing in the highlights. I also added a bit of vibrance to pump up the color just a bit.

Photo Sale!

This image and all of my others on my website here are now 50% off until Labor Day. I thought that after the long winter that we endured a photo sale was in order. If you like the photo above just click on it, and you will be taken directly to the image on SmugMug. If you just want to browse my online portfolio you can click on the link below. At the checkout you can enter the code ‘summer’ to save 50% on any image(s) that you pick.

50% Off