SCCA vintage. first try at panning :)

[brunester]

been wanting to try this motorsports photog thing for awhile now. finally got my butt down to laguna seca for this race. i didnt stay for it all because i thought it was going to start raining :(
please tell me what you think and any tips you have would be very cool :p
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/9241/race0001webfb7.jpg
^ why does the metal look ripply? it doesnt on the big version?
http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/2836/race0021webmd3.jpg

http://img95.imageshack.us/img95/4681/race0024webds5.jpg

http://img95.imageshack.us/img95/4313/race0029webth4.jpg

thanks for looking

[bfox]

You're off to a good start Eric.
My comments would regard the color cast/flatness of the images and composition.
The first 3 shots all suffer from odd cropping. I prefer to either be "obviously" tight on the driver (or something else interesting on the car), or try to be loose enough to get the whole car in the shot. Preferably with the car off center so it has some room in front of it to "move into". This helps to give some flow to the image. You have the entire car in number 3, and it's nice and sharp (maybe a bit over sharpened?) and has a sense of speed, but it could benefit from a bit less space behind the car and a bit more in front...if it's there to work with, of course.

Take some time to work with the levels and color. The whites could be whiter and the blacks can be blacker. What white balance were these shot with? How did you post-process them?
-Brad

[brunester]

um thanks :)
all i did was put them on the cloudy setting in Dpp and then put em in photoshop and resized them, then sharpened with my usual 200, .3, 0 and then put em on the web

[bfox]

um thanks :) all i did was put them on the cloudy setting in Dpp and then put em in photoshop and resized them, then sharpened with my usual 200, .3, 0 and then put em on the web
Hmm....although it was cloudy, doesn't seem like you're getting a good result. You should be able to get something that "pops" a bit more if you work the brightness/contrast a bit. I don't use DPP too much, so I'm not sure what tools are in there, but it should be possible. If there's some sort of custom white balance tool that allows you pick the whites and the blacks that would help a lot. Just to show it can be done, here are two I shot at Laguna Seca in similar conditions:

http://foxfoto.smugmug.com/photos/90109857-L.jpg

http://foxfoto.smugmug.com/photos/90109764-L.jpg