Another Year Watching The Greater Lafayette Soap Box Derby

Last year I kind of stumbled upton the soap box derby that was happening outside of my kids school. I saw the marks on the road while picking them up from camp and looked into it a little. I decided to head down and see what it was all about. I had a blast. I had another job that I had to get to, but I made the most of my time on the course. This year I had a better idea of what was going on. I went a little early to make the photo above. I knew that it meant that I would be sitting around for a while, but I like the idea of the early start photo.

A Little Panning

When there is racing you have to pan a little. The cars go fast, but you have to do a lot of the work with the pan. For auto racing I can get away with a little slower shutter speed. For this race I went down to 1/10th of a second. That was about the lowest number that I thought that I could get keepers at. I really like how this one turned out.

Getting In Tight

I took my 300mm lens to the track to make these photos. I love these photos of the racers focused on the track ahead. I could probably have just used the 50-150mm lens and cropped in, but this was more fun to try and stay on the racer tight. A little practice every now and then is good for me.

Sense Of Place

I made a ton of tight photos on the day. Getting in tight lets you see the racer better. I had the 300mm and sat close to the track to do this. I also like the idea of pulling back from time to time to show a sense of place. This family stopped near me to cheer on a car and I knew that it would make a perfect wide photo.

One Last Photo

I had made all of the photos that I had in mind. I knew that I had baseball coming up so I was getting ready to leave the course. I saw the flag and had the idea for this photo. The next car luckily had bits of red, white, and blue on it so it fit the frame perfectly. I am glad that I stuck around for this one last photo.

More Photos From The Day

If you were part of the derby in some way here are the photos that I made on the day. They are free to download and use for non-commercial purposes.