After weather and other complications keeping us from having a Friday Night Street Legal Drag event to go to, we finally managed to get out to the track to watch some racing action!
Test & Tune
Saturday was the Test & Tune for the drag racers, right before the following Saturday as the start of the 2010 racing season. That meant there was a wide variety of cars out to get some kinks worked out, as well as drivers working on getting their competition licenses.
From what we stuck around to watch, nobody was being very serious about the runs… But I’m sure there were a lot of things in the works for many of the teams. Yeah, teams… It seems like it’s a huge, huge thing here. All I can really tell you is that I saw a LOT of money out there, but that’s what drag is. (Money!)
That said, there were some people out to have fun and some younger people out to get on the strip since Friday night had been cancelled. It was my first time at a strip with imports racing, ha. It’s been a very long time since I’ve gone to watch drag racing, that’s all. 
The photography…
What I was not expecting was for the photography to be so different than anything I’ve done before!
You see, I’m working on creating my own photography business. I don’t really even have a name yet… I’m sure I’ll just call it CarsxGirl Photography or something. 
But I want to get the word out here that I’m out there, I’m taking photos, and if you’d like one of you & your car racing, I’m selling them.
Lucky for me, I have my marketing husband who loves talking about my work, so I give him some business cards and he’s out there handing them out to show my blog and my work. I’m very lucky indeed in that regard.
Sadly, I didn’t do nearly as well as I’d hoped in taking photos… Some I really like, others, well, not so much. They’re very general and broad and not something I imagine people would really want. (But some I take for possible sharing in my posts, so I shoot for a variety of reasons.)
I now have a better idea of what to shoot for, and it’s nice because I can sit in the stands, use my larger zoom lens (55mm to 200mm, so it’s not much bigger…) to get some nice shots of the cars as they line up.
I did find out that I like taking burnout shots!
And that maybe I need to work harder on learning my old cars… I get easily confused by many of them, lol.
Anyhow, working on the business aspects of photography is scary, honestly. I still feel scared that I’m putting it out there that I’d like people to pay me for this! 
My (better) photos
As usual, I took many photos, and liked a few. The ones that show up in my Flickr photostream are the ones that make the strict cut of “good enough to share publicly.” (I do keep any picture that turns out well, even if it’s not that great.)
Please, leave me some feedback!! I’m eager to know what people think of these, if you have any tips or tricks for shooting drag, or hell, even if you have anything to say on me selling photos… I need all the help I can get! Serious.
Oh, and would you ever drag your car? Do you do drag? We had to tell a lot of people that they’ll see us out there, but not on the strip…. Not our kinda racing. But we will watch!
Yes, this Mustang was racing. But I liked how it was parked here...
This particular Mustang was being driven by a girl. I think there was one or two other cars being girl-driven as well. Girls in racing is good. 
If I remember right, this was one of the guys going for their competition licenses.
One of the shots when I was figuring out how to frame the cars. I think it turned out well.
One of my better burnout pictures. Now these were kinda cool to take...
And another nice burnout. I'm thinking I need to zoom in more on the cars...
It was also fun to get shots of the cars that picked up the front wheels on launch, like this Datsun 240Z.
I feel like this Mach 1 picture was my best set up from the day. What do you think?
Related posts:
Shots for next time: At that line and getting the “squat” when the car launches. Also, if it “packs” the tires. Everyone loves to see daylight under the front tires (lucky RWD cars!)
Just some ideas on other things to shoot, but what you got looks good so far!
Keep up the coverage
I’m still figuring out where I can and can’t be, haha, so it’s pretty strange. I found out last night I can be pretty close to the cars when they do their burn outs, so I might do some of those closer. I usually end up talking to people and so I don’t take many pictures….
I think we’ll end up going back some Saturday to take pictures like this again, where I have more light than on Friday nights. (But Fridays we can walk around the “pits” and stuff, where we get sidetracked talking to people… Lol.)