In Full FLight

[John 2]

Taken in Appleby of Horse Fair fame. The racing was part of the Horse Fair week but not the fair itself.

Nikon D7000
18-200mm Nikkor @ 255mm
1/400th Sec @f7.1 ISO 200

[jprzybyla]

Nicely done John... great action image.

[mammarazzi]

Superb.......amazing shot soooo envious...wish it was mine.........

Joanne xx

[Mike Buckley]

Great composition but it's a bit unfair that the driver in back has two horses pulling his rig.

Is there something about your post-processing that looks like smudged areas on the horses' torsos? There is also some stuff in the background around the drivers and horses that isn't consistent with the rest of the background.

[John 2]

Thanks Joe, thanks Joanne.

Not sure what you are seeing Mike. Hadn't noticed the oddity of the hidden jockey but you can see three sets of wheels. I don't believe they were that close but the foreshortening of the telephoto makes it seem that way. There has been no processing of the horses but some of the BG has been pushed further OOF and darkened to isolate the subject more. Otherwise what you see is what you get.

[Mike Buckley]

some of the BG has been pushed further OOF and darkened to isolate the subject more.

It's the darkening of the background that might be causing the most important situation that I'm seeing, or rather it's that all of the background isn't darkened. Notice the light area immediately adjacent to both jockeys, just above the grass on the left side of the frame and above the grass and behind the rig on the right side of the frame. Those light areas appear unnatural to me. However, I'm not used to seeing harness races so there's a possibility that the light areas that I'm describing are dust.

Notice also the light area immediately to the right of the lead horse's nostrils. I thought that was the dark horse but maybe it's some dust in the air.

Last, look at the lead horse's shoulders and lower neck. There's a noticeable lack of detail that made me initially think that you had used too much noise reduction. However, seeing your ISO setting makes me think you probably didn't apply any noise reduction. Perhaps that lack of detail compared to the rest of the horse's body is motion blur, but I wouldn't think so considering that your shutter speed stopped the action of the hoofs.

Sorry to appear so nit-picky, but for whatever reason these issues jumped off the monitor at me as soon as I looked at your otherwise very nice image.

By the way, I was joking of course about the number of sulkies, but now that I study the position of the wheels, it seems that you've actually captured four sulkies. It's amazing that no part of the fourth horse or two of the drivers can be seen, though if I knew more about the hoof patterns of trotters and pacers it might be possible to identify at least one hoof from every horse.