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I frantically looked over my checklist, making sure I had everything and packed it into my small black bag. The caravan arrived and we left at around 10. I get a call on the phone with a request to take pictures while the cars are driving through the dark freeway. Should be interesting. I reach to the back seat of John's car and struggle to unbind my Slik 300DX tripod from the latches at the bottom of my bag. Finally, they break off and I pocket them as I wrestle the back over the uncomfortable Civic seats, all while John continues following the caravan.

With a push of the button, a cold breeze enters the cabin of the car. I'm only wearing shorts. I shiver, but shake it off. I've never taken good pictures out of a car window before, so it should be quite an experience. I pop the lens cap off and pray no rocks come flying up from the cars in front of us into my precious glass. I fire a couple of test shots, but John's stiff suspension makes contact with several bumps on the highway. Blurry, blurry, blurry. I shrug it off and throw the camera into manual mode, then lean out the window as i motion one of the cars in our caravan to switch two lanes over. My head is filled with a beautiful images of easton chang-like photographs, but a hard wind quickly knocks the entire idea out of my head.

I push the continuous shoot button, lean out one more time and *snap snap snap snap* .. Good? No idea. I roll the window up and pop my lens cap back on. Its cold.. too cold. We're travelling way too fast to make the shots look good, I'm thinking. I check my settings again.

ExposureTime:1/8sec
ISOSpeedRatings:800
ApertureValue:F3.5
ExposureMode:Manual

1/8 a second. Now that I think about it, my shots probably would have been better had I used a faster shutter speed (maybe 1/80-1/400).

Only a couple of shots come out, but thats not the reason I came on the trip in the first place. As the car I'm in speeds on the left side, I notice the leader switch two lanes over to take pictures. I roll down the window and fire a couple of shots. Its too dark.. way too dark. My phone rings as I notice him exiting the freeway. Unexpected stop--we have some fenders to roll.

We miss the exit and backtrack through side streets. When we arrive at the gas station, we see the MR2 propped up on jacks with a toolbox open. A small group has gathered around to see what the problem is. 245 tires, too wide.

The wait is unbearable, so I walk to John's car and grab my tripod. The lighting of the gas station is good, but not good enough for high detail. My ISO is still around 400-800, but I realize the noise on it is probably too high for my liking. With my Slik 300DX set up, I drop the ISO level back down to 100 and start taking pictures of Son's s2000.

About 40 minutes later, the caravan continues on to Buttonwillow. I decide to keep taking pictures, but stop midway through the 2 hour drive. Too cold in the valleys because of the breeze. It feels like a good 40-50 degrees w/o windchill. When we arive there, it is chaos. We have no idea where to stay. Motel 6 is out of the question now because we mistakenly all pull into the lot. Need to save cash. We head over to Denny's and pile into the hotel room one at a time. 15 heads in a one bedroom apartment. That has to be a fire hazard. Without hesitation, I unpack my camera and snap a couple of pictures. We only get 3 hours of sleep that night.

The next morning (3 hours later) we wake up and head over to McDonald's for breakfast. Carl's Jr. is closed. Some of the members grab food before we head 10 miles north to the race track. The entrance fee is 10 dollars a head. We enter and I immediately see the competition. WRX's, EVO8's, Ferraris. A smile comes to my face as I realize I'm going to be taking pictures of these monsters. I'm sure the drivers have the opposite feeling.

As the drivers unload their car of excess wait, I set-up my equipment. We haven't received confirmation of whether or not I could go on the infield, so a couple of us head over and talk to Tommy, who is running the event. He gives us the OK if we talk to the corner workers, so me and Dan locate one and talk to him. The race has already begun and he won't let us get on the field while cars are moving. Thats fine. I frown a bit because I waited so long and I have to sit on the sidelines for the first run. He gives me the ok to cross one barrier to a safe spot, still far from the track. No worry, though. I pop out my Sigma 70-210mm and go full telephoto and try some panning techniques. Feet planted square into the ground, with my waist turning to follow the cars. Glancing at my LCD, I notice I'm doing horribly. They all look blurry. With reassurance from my Archos Gmini, I continue to wildly take pictures, hoping some would come out.

Thankfully some of the pictures do come out.

I quickly realizing panning is really difficult, but I'm getting better at it. A ND filter would have been nice since I'm shooting at f/22. Too much background detail, but the pan removes a lot of the problem. I switch to my 50mm f/1.8 when I reach "magic mountain", a large hill with vision problems. Impact zone prone zone at the bottom because of poor visibility, but I'm so close to the cars that its almost rediculous.

All in all, quite a fun day for photography.

You can see a full gallery here.