Philly Park & the Daytona 500

Today we spent a couple hours at the Philadelphia Park Racetrack & Casino. I took quite a bunch of the "ponies."

I'm not as happy with my "stop action" attempts today as I was during my last visit to Philly Park in January. I got a lot of blurry images this time in comparison. It was overcast today...no sun like last time. I had the camera on shutter priority and the shutter speed was super high for these and I had the ISO bumped up pretty high because they were coming out dark during my test shots.

These were the best of the bunch for today's short visit:



I taking shots of the horses and their handlers...and this guy is a particular favorite of mine. I think this worked well with this conversion.















To view all of my horse racing photography click this link: http://jenweaverphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/3719777_6Qvt7/1/255785922_wtoXb

After Philly Park we stopped home for a few minutes and then headed over to my brother in law's house to watch the Daytona 500. I brought my camera with me (of course) and snapped some shots of the party. :)

Welcome Race Fans!



My brother in law Ed:



Ed & "Amers":



Things were heating up with the race!



Had to take some family shots while David was here from Florida for a visit:



David & his girlfriend Julia:



I'm not a big car racing fan but for fun we all picked drivers out of an envelope and put $10.00 in the pool to make the race more interesting. Guess who won the $50.00 pot???? Me! One of my drivers won the race!!! Yay!

That certainly made my night! I'll have to put that towards some studio lighting. :)

A Day At The Races

Today we went to Philadelphia Park Casino and Racetrack for a day at the races. We got there towards the end of the day so it was quite shady on the track but I still got a lot of great shots from the paddock since the sun was shining nicely there.

I practiced my stop action shots and set my shutter speed very high to get the following series of shots. Somehow I picked one horse coming down the stretch (#4) to focus on and it ended up winning (that made my husband happy since he picked #4 to win!)

And they're off!















Coming down the stretch:









To view more of my horse racing photos click here: http://jenweaverphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/3719777/1/242721849

The Breeders Cup World Championship Horse Races

Today I attended the first day of the Breeders Cup Horse Races at Monmouth Park in Oceanport, NJ.

It was a rainy, cold, dark day so it damperened my spirits about the photo opportunities I was looking forward to having (ever since we bought the tickets months ago).

This was the best I could do from where I was trying to take shelter and keep my camera dry.

(taken from a window from a higher level).


This was the best I could do with the situation I was dealt with in terms of the weather:











Below are some sites from around the track:



We're back at the races, tomorrow, for Day 2.

To view the entire gallery click here: http://jenweaverphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/3719777/1/213382379