Racing Smashes - Created at Home

My son Suriya has a pair of toy race cars and he often creates an accident situation with his play and catches that in the digital camera in the form of a video. But, today he came up with a different idea. To make it in the form of a picture.
First he asked me for the camera which I readily obliged. Then he was experimenting the two toy cars and making one of the car be on the floor and another in his hand as if it hits in an angle. He took some five clicks with the cars at different angles and got satisfied with one of the shot.
Then he involved me in his experiment. He asked me to transfer the pic into computer and delete the info other than the two cars. I used paint brush utility, erased the spots with the eraser utility and got a result like the one below.

He then asked me to take the below photo from the archives in the computer. This was the MRF arch at the Madras Motor Race Track situated at Irungattukottai in Chennai. The pic was clicked couple of years when I went for the MRF Racing event. This comes up as screen saver in the home computer at times. 

So far, I was not clear on the idea he was having in his mind, but, was responding to his demands and giving him the results with the Paint Brush utility on the home computer.
Finally he asked me to create a scenario in which his cars would appear as if it had smashed at the race track exactly below the arch.
At this point, I became more than impressed with his idea. So, continued with pasting the toy car picture onto the race track picture and doing miniscule cut & paste jobs to match the texture around.

The end result was so fantastic. At first I was in the mood to hit the bed and take a good sleep. But, his wonderful idea made me to sit back at the computer and record such an innovative work by him at this age of just 7 years.

MRF CHALLENGE 2010 - Race at the Irungaatukottai race track

This Car / Bike race is happening on this Sunday, the 14th of Feb'10.

I love photography, but so far my photo collection has tons of portraiture / candid shots which I happen to take often. But capturing a moving race car is a tricky one. I have not got the opportunity so far. Having got sponsor tickets for this event happening on 14th Feb from my company, I have planned to try capturing the race cars while they fly at high speeds. Quite said, actually it is a tricky thing to do. This involves a technique called panning. When used in still photography it produces a result in which a fore ground subject (fast moving car) appears still / frozen and the background appears to be streaked / skewed. I have not tried this so far; planning it in my mind to give it a try is giving me enough butterfly moments on my stomach. But this involves using tripods and precision settings on the camera. Duping it with bare hands, I suppose will not give good results. Any way, trying that is not making me lose any thing. Lets see and gain a never before experience.

My actual plan was to visit the Irungaatukottai race track on Sunday, but lucky that, I happened to speak with one of my higher official Sundar Sir. Racing is one of the key area for my tyre manufacturing company and Sundar sir is one of the brains in this field. While we were talking over phone on the plans for us visiting the race, he surprised me with giving me a cool YES for me to have a peep of the pits a day in advance.

I also got Okay from my boss, for my tomo.

I am heading to Chennai tomorrow morning at 4.00 a.m. I should probably reach the Madras Motor Sports Club at  Irungaatukottai  by 10.00 a.m. Hey, the time now is nearing to 12 midnight.

Ohh, should crash to get a three hour sleep and get back ready for my 4'o clock bus.

Though I am still clueless on capturing a high speed car in the best perspective, I am sure that my peep into the pits at the race course tomorrow should make my hunger for photography get an extra appetiser.

Stay tuned for the never before pictures of a race pit.

Pic Courtesy