Drive By Shootings OR...

...taking photographs from the passenger seat of a car moving at sixty plus miles per hour.

Stripped Car,I-295 and Kennilworth Ave NE, Washington, DC
Coming home from our trip to Kilmarnock, VA Jenne offered to take over driving for the last half of the journey. I said fine, please do. This not only gave my back a rest, but gave me the chance to shoot photos from a moving vehicle, which is not adviseable if the photographer and the driver are one in the same. It served as a an exercise in observation and an experiment to see what sort of things I could spot, get in my viewfinder, compose by the 'rules' and photograph at over sixty miles an hour. There was no stopping, no slowing down and no turning around and trying a second time. It also gave me a chance to learn more about the new camera. I set the Nikon D70 to shutter priority mode, set the shutter speed to 1/500 sec, slapped on the 28-300mm hyper-zoom lens* and looked for photo ops. I missed a lot of things - that happens at sixty mph - but it was good practice and training for my eyes none the less. Here's a selection of the images I captured between LaPlata, MD and Laurel, MD. All of the images are presented full frame with no cropping. You see them as I shot them.

Keep Out, Abandoned gas station along Rte-301, Laplata, MD
Happy Birthday Lisa, overpass along I-95 near Laurel, MD
Learn to Fly, a small regional airpark in Pomonkey, MD
Power Lines, I-95 south of Laurel, MD
Red Top, one of over a dozen liquor stores in a five mile stretch of Route 301 south of LaPlata, MD
Thunderbird Apartments, Route 301 south of LaPlata, MD
Walton's Market, Route 224 Pomonkey, MD

* The Nikon D70 multiplies the focal length of camera lenses by a facto of 1.5. My Sigma 28-300mm hyper-zoom when attached to the D70 becomes a 42-450mm zoom lens. This has it's advantages and disavantages. Because of the multiplication factor I don't really have a wide angle lens anymore.