I'll bet you didn't know I was into cars. Hehe... just kidding. I'm definitely not, but that didn't stop me this weekend. For 50 years now, Kelowna has been host to the Knox Mountain Hill Climb and so Lee Johnson decided it was high time I took in the event. With my camera of course. The goal of the day was to use as low a shutter speed as possible so that the background is blurred while keeping the cars in sharp focus. If that doesn't sound very hard, then you should try it someday.

Anyway, since I don't know anything about the cars I'm just gonna dump the pictures here and leave you to tell me about them in the comments.  I'd love to know which is your favorite shot too, if you have one.

I think this is my favorite shot of the day.

Probably my second most favorite shot of the day.

This was easily the luckiest shot of the day. He came into the corner really hot and then locked up his breaks trying not to hit the tires. I'll bet he had flat spots on his tires after that.

Easily the most challenging shot of the day. This is about 100 yards after the starting line and about 200 yards before Turn 1. The cars are under maximum acceleration so panning the camera to keep the car in frame and sharp focus is very hard. You have to anticipate the rate of change and try to move the camera with the car through the whole arc. We're about 20 feet from the cars so the angular velocity is pretty high. Unfortunately there are no places to get farther away since most of the road has steep rises on one side and sharp drops on the other.

I debated on whether or not I should tell you this, but these (admittedly mediocre) shots were the best out of over 400 frames. For my first time doing that sort of shooting though I'm pretty pleased with the results.

As you can see, it was a beautiful day. But don't be fooled... we got soaked at the beginning while it rained. Then the sun came out and dried up all the rain and the eentsy weensy spider walked up the spout again.

Things are a lot easier when the cars aren't moving.