Formula 1 USGP Day 4 (Race Day)

Oh dear god yesterday was an early, early day. After being out for qualies, and seeing the little note at the bottom of our parking tag that said gates open at 7, and they recommend arriving no later than 8, we figured it might be a good idea to get up early, grab some coffee, and try to get to the track around sunrise. Amazingly enough, we did just that. We were sitting out on the mound running along the turn 8-9-10 complex by around 7:20am.

The race started at 1:00pm.

It's not quite as bad as it sounds, though, because they have several support races throughout the day to pass the time and help keep the fans pumped up. Here's a photo (from the Porsche series race) of two of the cars getting into each other.




By lunchtime it was well over 90 degrees F. Track temp was at an unheard-of 60C. Yeah it was a wee spot warm out there!



Finally!!! The lights went out and the race was on! Typical of many F1 races, the race was won from the front row. The real joy in an F1 race for a true fan is not really so much who wins the race, but the experience of the entire weekend, the lead-up to the race, the qualifications, the testing, the teams and aero configurations of the cars. The race itself is, in some ways, anticlimactic. There was a hell of a battle for first, though, and what made it even more interesting was that the battle was between teammates--Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, both from team Vodafone-McLaren-Mercedes. Hamilton ended up on top in the end, taking his second win in eight days (having previously won the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal).

Here are some more sights from race-day at this awesome spectacle.








On the victory lap...

Formula 1 USGP--Day 3

Qualifying today! Jason and I got out to the track around 10:00, just in time for the Saturday practice session and then a nice wait in the 92 degree heat for the qualifying in the afternoon. We brought camp-chairs and umbrellas today, and walked around to the opposite side of the track from where we were shooting yesterday. Got to get up on a low hill and even found an area where we could shoot around the fencing (and where all the other photographers congregated). Talked to an older guy out of Chicago who'd been coming to the races for 30 years to photograph, and also a young guy from (I think) Germany who had a killer 300mm zoom. The 70-200 with the 2x extender is still working like a champ, though tomorrow for the race itself I'm going to be bringing the monopod.

I shot a LOT heavier today, ending up with close to 600 photos. After sorting through them all I realized that I had dozens of basically the same shot, over and over (and over, and over...). So in a way that was kind of cool; I know now that I can go out tomorrow for the race, get some great shots early on, and then kick back and watch the race with both eyes (instead of one eye through a viewfinder and the other squinted shut). As far as I know though, that one area where we were shooting today is about the only place on the track where we can shoot without fencing in the way, so tomorrow we're planning on grabbing breakfast on the way to the track and getting out there EARLY. We'll see how that pans out!

In the meantime, photos from today...

Formula 1 USGP--Day 2

Practice day today. The drivers are on-track for two 90-minute sessions. My buddy Jason had a job interview this morning (good luck, Jas!), so we didn't make it out to the morning session. S'ok, I got to spend the morning making pancakes with Molly (little nut hates bread, but loves pancakes...go figure).

By 1:15 we were on the road heading for the track, and by 2:00 we were parked and hearing the glorious sounds of V-8 engines revving to over 19,000 RPM inside the bowl of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. 90 degrees and getting more humid by the moment, thank goodness for ClimaCool shirts!!

Anyway, we caught the last hour or so of the practice session, and then wandered around the infield for awhile just soaking up the atmosphere and people-watching. Most everyone was bailing, so we decided to pack it in for the day and meet up with Kelly and Molly for pizza. Between bathtime and chasing around the table and brushing teeth, I managed to pull the 100 or so photos I took today and get them processing.

Formula 1 USGP--Day One

I'm a sports nut, but I'm cut from a different mold I guess, because all the sports I follow are either 'outcast sports' (NHL hockey) or European (English Premier League football (soccer), Formula 1 motor racing). Anyway, this weekend is like my Christmas. It's an amazing thing to live in Indianapolis and be able to drive less than a half hour to go see the US F-1 race. Actually, though, in the past I wasn't able to go because of prior shooting commitments, so I'm SO pumped about being able to spend almost the entire weekend at the track soaking in the sights, sounds, and events of a Formula 1 race.

Day One was today--just an open-track for the fans to come out and walk the pit-lane to watch the teams setting up the cars in the paddocks. Awesome, awesome, and more awesome. I got to the track around 10:30, found a parking spot, and hiked the 3/4 mile or so to the speedway office to pick up my tickets and parking pass. Then it was another 1/4 mile or so to the main gate, then about 3/4 of a mile through the infield to the entrance to the pits/paddocks. I got to test out the new 2x extender on our 70-200mm long zoom lens, and holy wow is it awesome. At something close to 500mm of zoom I was getting tack-sharp shots of mechanics' hands from fifty feet away. WHEWWWWW too cool!

Just got done processing photos (I shot light...only about 180 today), and here are some of the best. The whole set can be seen by heading over to our Flickr Page.

Can't wait to see the cars on-track at tomorrow afternoon's practice. I have a feeling I'll need a few extra CF cards for that. ;-)

Movin' On Up...

So Molly's about 2 1/2 now, and we decided it was about time to get her out of the crib. We've heard horror stories about kids falling out of bed, not adjusting, up every 10 minutes for hours, etc., so we've been stressing over it for weeks. We were going to just pull her crib and get her a little twin bed, but she's been using fiberboard hand-me-down furniture for the whole time she's been here (and Kelly went into a furniture store kids' section ), so we decided to take the plunge and get her a whole new bedroom suite.

We didn't take her with when we went to get her 'big girl bed', and you should have seen the look on her face when we walked in and we weren't carrying a new mattress. Just this total excitement changing to a look of utter, crestfallen dispair; "You didn't get my big-girl-bed!" Well it was on order and took a couple weeks to get in.

So then just by happenstance she was off visiting the grandparents for a few days when it did come in, so we had the chance to really fix up her room and get everything settled in while she wasn't here. So we brought her home and she got to see her whole new room all put together. She went absolutely nuts, and loves being in her room; she's constantly asking us if we want to go play up in her room with her. I got some cool flower and butterfly appliques, so we didn't have to re-paint but her room still looks totally different. Anyway, she slept about half the night the first night in her room, then woke up and wanted to come in with us (which is pretty normal, since she had been away for a few days and just missed us). After that first night she's slept all night in her big-girl-bed every night, with no rails or anything else. We got a little pink step-stool so she can climb up in there on her own, and oh boy that is the coolest thing ever for her. She takes great pride in getting into bed and under the covers on her own now.

So thank goodness, another milestone passed with much less stress than we had worried about.


Some photos...

A few new tank shots, in preparation for the book Kelly and I are writing about aquarium photography...

WS1_9539May_26-_2007-2

WS1_9539May_26-_2007-2, originally uploaded by whitesharkphoto.

Just a super-quick shot from this past Saturday's wedding. Going to try to keep posting more photos more quickly, so more to come! :-)

"Braveheart" (or...Molly versus Blue Crayola Marker)

Molly: 0

Crayola: 1

Holy hell, has it really been since March that I've posted on the blog?!?! Ugh, I am such a slacker. Okay, not entirely true. I'm not a slacker at all, just a blog-slacker. As always, my deepest and most humble apologies to those of you out there (all three of you...har-har-har) that keep coming back here hoping for new posts.

Let me try to bring you up to speed on the goings-on in the Wikman household and business.

• The main reason why I've been such a one-off with the blog lately (lately?! It's been months, man. That kind of surpasses 'lately'!) is because of classes. I was taking a somewhat lighter load this semester, which now I'm very thankful for. The first half of the semester went really well, really smooth, really...light. I should have known! The second half of the semester was all projects. For the last month I've been sleeping between 3 and 5 hours a night, and have been stressed to the point of...well I don't know how to finish that analogy. Let's just say I've been pretty frazzled. Kelly and Molly and Grandma have been absolute saints for putting up with me and my stresses. But as with most things in life, it all worked out for the best in the end. I have a new nickname...'dean'. Why?! Because that's the list I'm on... Yeahhhhh, straight A's once again! Woo-hooo!!

• Molly continues to grow like a weed. She's about 2 1/2 now and is staggeringly smart. She makes connections and intuits things that I don't even get. Truly amazing little child. A quick snap of 'my girls' at Easter a few weeks ago...

• Hockey season has also been keeping us very busy. The Ice finished the year on an incredible run, powering through the last couple games of the regular season and the first couple rounds of the Clark Cup playoffs. Kelly had the chance the travel with the team to Cedar Rapids, Iowa for one of the games in the second round of the playoffs. She had a focus motor in her main lens go bad, and was pretty worried that none of her shots had come out. Uhhhh, sure Kel, whatever you say...
  
  
  She did those focusing a 200mm lens manually. For those of you that don't know a ton about photography, that is simply amazing! And almost all of her shots came out. My wife rocks.
  
  Unfortunately, the Ice lost in the first game of the final-four of the USHL championships yesterday afternoon. The guys did an outstanding job this year, and Kelly and I couldn't be more proud of them.

• Now that things are starting to wind down with no classes and no hockey, they're starting to wind up with weddings. We kicked off our 'season' last night with Amy and Craig, who had their wedding in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, about an hour and a half from Indy. I'm still sitting in the hotel at the moment, propped up on the couch and waiting for Kelly to wake up (I'm still stuck in that rut of needing very little sleep, so I'm usually up by 5 or 6 no matter what, with only the big bags under my eyes to tell the tale!), so I haven't gotten a chance to see the photos on a big monitor yet. But I can't wait!!! Scanning through some of them on the cameras' LCDs last night has me itching to see what we got!!

Really that's about it, I think. I know it doesn't seem like much, and I know there's stuff I'm forgetting (because I haven't had my requisite large-coffee-six-sugars yet this morning), so hopefully I'll get off my duff and keep the blog a LOT more updated as summer progresses.

And if I don't. Email me at john at whitesharkphoto dot com (I spelled it out so junk mailers won't harvest the address) to remind me!! :-)

**** Warning: No photos, but some icky descriptions below... *********









Okay, I warned you!!
As you may or may not know, Kelly and I are both avid soccer players. We play indoor three nights a week year-round and outdoor whenever the weather's above freezing.

Last night in our indoor match, the opposing keeper went out to clear the ball. Kicked with his right foot and then somehow planted on that foot as well. Foot slipped, knee hyperextended. He was on the ground screaming for awhile. I've been there, that's no fun. Knee swells up like a water balloon. They carried him off and got him some ice.

That was the first half. 2nd half starts and about 5 min in I'm in goal (I'm a keeper), their player is dribbling down towards me. Our defender is right with him, they're jockeying for the ball. Ball squirts free and out of the corner of my eye (I'm watching the ball move away from that play) I see their feet get tangled up. Our guy falls over sideways and rolls. Their guy stumbles and falls backwards...with his foot underneath him. Everybody on the field heard it...sounded like a baseball bat wrapped in a wet towel as his leg snapped. Broke it completely, looked like right above the right ankle. He rolls over onto his stomach screaming this horrible high-pitched wail, and he's got his knee bent so that his foot is up in the air. At first I didn't notice it, but then when I looked I realized that his foot was kind of off to the side of his leg and not pointing the right direction any more. BLEAH!!!!!

So the remainder of our game was pretty much cancelled while we waited for the paramedics to come take care of him. Kelly used to be an EMT, so she stayed with the poor guy and held his hand and helped keep his leg steady until the medicos got there.

The team that played after that needed a keeper, so I stayed for an extra match. Good match, lots of fun.

Following that another match started. I was taking off my shinguards and talking to some of my buddies from the other team and watching the new game start. Girl on one of the teams goes into the corner after the ball, keeper comes out to clear it away, they get tangled up. Heard the pop of her ACL blowing from 30 feet away. She's laying on the ground screaming. I had to get home, so didn't wait around to see the paramedics come back for that one.

Mind you, this is an over-30 recreational league. We all know each other and for the most part play really low-key. We're all just out there to get some exercise. It's been probably five years since I"ve seen a serious injury at this place, and now three in one night, all just freak injuries that could happen at any time! Good grief!!!

Hmm, just realized I killed my photo when I did some massive updates to our main website. Have to check that out...

:)

Well, we survived the big snowstorm of ought-seven. From watching the weather guys on TV, you'd think it was the end of time or something. Hello! We got about 10" of snow over the course of two weeks. OooooooooOOOooo!!! I remember when I was a kid we'd get that kind of snow in a day!
Anyway, it was still fun to be home with Molly and playing in the snow. She was visiting her grandparents in southern Indiana for a lot of that time, but still made it home for some of the snow. She loves to make " 'now angels", but needs some help waving her arms and legs.
We've been spending these slow weeks finishing up some projects around the house, letting Molly do a lot of fingerpainting, working on some album-design projects for Whiteshark, and preparing a new re-design of our website. Look for that to roll out (hopefully) in a few weeks.
In the meantime, here are a few recent photos...

Some people like the holiday season, some people like to season their steaks. We prefer hockey season!!