Scenes from a tractor pull (comments?)

[rlemert]

  The North Carolina Dept. of Agriculture every spring sponsors a "Got to be NC" festival to support the state's farming industry. It's like a mini state fair with free admission. This year I spent about an hour at the tractor pull practicing with my Canon Rebel EOS. These were all shot at 100 ISO, f/10.0, and generally 1/80 to 1/125 (Aperture Priority). In hindsight I should have raised the ISO a stop and opened up a bit to try to better "freeze" the action. (I just realized that I also took these with auto-focus at "one shot". I probably should have used AI Servo.)

We have liftoff! (For some reason this is the only shot I got of a full "wheely", so I've included it even though the focus is terrible.)

McCormick (Nothing spectacular, but this may be the best image I got all day.)

Pullin' some serious torque! (Notice the stress bands on the tire sidewalls. When this guy stopped he probably rose three inches in the back end as the tires relaxed and lost their distortion.)

Rowdy H (Some of the best pulls of the day were accomplished by people who put her into the lowest gear and just kept going, slowly but surely. Not this guy! He probably went through the full course - a "full pull" - in about seven seconds. This one I could have probably slowed down the shutter a bit to get a more pronounced panning effect, but you never know who the speed demons are going to be.)

(Other technical details: RAW images processed through "Raw Therapee" - automatic exposure adjustments, the cropped and sharpened in Gimp.)

 

[digital flower]

I like them. I know there wasn't much you could do but the backgrounds are distracting.