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Sideways in turn 2, Michael is feeling out the limits of his setup in the warmup session

Detroit Gallery Reader's Choice

According to our voters, this gallery had a lot of good shots and the decision was hard. The rain at Detroit definitely helped to create a set of images that was rather rare for recent years. 18 out of 27 images got votes - again proving that our galleries are a decent mix of images.

For a while it looked as if Paul Tracy had a good run going ("Far Out,Man"), as well as Stefan Johansson with his visor slapping shot (I think our caption deservers half the votes for that image, as he really was just closing his visor ;-))

The Detroit photos are again a co-production between Mike Levitt and myself. Mike had full pit access, while I was not able to work there at all - thus the lack of pit lane shots, an area I usually like to show more of.

Action seemed to be the prefered type of photo again - cars going sideways or lifting tires were more popular than such magazine standards as the checkered flag shot (zero votes - Mike, take notice!). I was surprised not to get any votes for the crisp Greg Moore shot, as he has had a strong voter following. Bobby Rahal's three fans (three voting fans, that is ;-)) made sure he would be represented in our vote result.

My personal favorite in this selection was the image captioned "Kilroy was Here" - probably because I saw the image scanned at 3072x2048 pixels; looking deep into the white of Al's eyes, while the water is rolling down the sides of the cockpit like on some old and dirty ValueJet liner. The shot just amazes me more on the technical side of things than the content. Pretty unreal what these cameras can record in such low light conditions (no, I don't get sponsored by Canon nor Kodak or Fuji ;-))

Here the vote ranking for the Detroit Gallery - action shots on top this week:

 Filename                     Thumbnail Caption        votes  percent
 mikey_sideways.jpg           Michey on the edge           9  18.00%
 unbelievable.jpg             Oh No! Another Yellow Flag!  5  10.00%
 this_car_rips.jpg            Far out, man!                5  10.00%
 not_quite_on_target.jpg      Not Quite on Target          4   8.00%
 gorillas_in_the_mist.jpg     Gorillas in the Mist         4   8.00%
 get_wet_for_beer.jpg         We get Wet for Beer          3   6.00%
 pruett_airborne.jpg          3-Wheeling to the Pole       3   6.00%
 battle_of_the_goodyears.jpg  Eat My Spray                 2   4.00%
 junior_rain_faceshot.jpg     Kilroy was Here              2   4.00%
 london_fog.jpg               London Fog                   2   4.00%
 is_this_formula_one.jpg      Wet Like Monaco              2   4.00%
 junior_car_wash.jpg          I washed the car, Roger      2   4.00%
 budboy_lock_to_lock.jpg      Bud-Boy Pushing it           2   4.00%
 hey_another_fotoboy.jpg      I Want You to Shop KMart     1   2.00%
 pupo_traffic_rama.jpg        Pupo's Wet Traffic Rama      1   2.00%
 wet_kmart_parking_lot.jpg    That's why it's called a Tub 1   2.00%
 where_is_my_umbrella.jpg     Where is my Umbrella?        1   2.00%
 ribeiro_bubble_visor.jpg     I see Bubbles on my Visor    1   2.00%

 total                                                    50 100.00%
About the photo:

The Photo above was taken a few moments after I arrived at the track on Saturday - I was late as usual at Belle Isle with its remote parking problem. I started taking pictures in the first photo hole I found and only a ferw frames into the first roll of film I took this image. I don't think I even saw what I had on film until I got the pictures developed that evening. Light was low, so the 'action' shutterspeed was forced on me by the conditions. Still - the picture is right on, and most other photographers didn't even try anything like it at that photo location.

lens :35-350mm/f2.8
body :EOS1N
exposure:f6.3 1/200sec
film :Expired Kodak Gold 100
flash :none
support :none