Harness racing. Day #2. July 5, 2008.

More from the quaint little harness track here in Goshen, NY on Saturday. It was nice to be able to return to the track for a second day of shooting (see: work) during their 5-day meet this week. There isn't any betting at the track, so the crowds are pretty tame, but it is a nice outing for everybody involved. I know the horsemen take all this very seriously. Our paper has had stories, some covering two full pages, during the week, so returning is an added plus, as a lot of employees went out of their way to introduce themselves and tell me how much they appreciate all the coverage the paper is giving the track. That means a lot in today's public perception of the news business. It's good to be recognized professionally. I mean, don't you like it when someone goes out their way to acknowledge your efforts...? Anyway, enough of the soapbox, let's look at images from yesterday:
*Mounted one of my trusty Nikon D-1X cameras again as a remote, this time on the outer wing of the starting gate to make the above image of the horses approaching the starting gate. (after further examination of this take from the second race, I see that the remote camera was actually fired while I was in the infield, to make the panning images of the leaders going by along the top of the stretch, and winner Jim Morrill driving the #1 horse (below). Again, knowing the official starter (we had a nice profile of him in the paper yesterday, with my photo, didn't hurt either.) allowed me to set-up my rig again on the starting gate. It's a different view from Thursday's remote set-up & straight-on view (earlier post from Thursday) of the horses & the driver of this horse above actually won 4 of the 8 races he competed in, so it was good to have a few different views of him in his races, as he turned out to be the main story of the day: