It's a Long Way Down!

Today's photo is of the Steel Eel, a roller coaster at Sea World San Antonio, just as it begins it's descent from the first hill. I took this photo on the 26th of December when members of the University of Arizona football team were visiting the park (Arizona is playing Oklahoma State in the Valero Alamo Bowl, being held in the Alamodome on the 29th of December. Both teams visited Sea World over the past few days, you can read more about it on the "Inside Sea World San Antonio" blog post by Katie Preuss ).

I went to the University of Arizona team website to try to identify the players, but the only player that I am pretty certain I was able to identify was the rider in the first car wearing the grey Arizona shirt. I think it is Colin Baxter, who wears number 64 and plays center. Of course, this is just a guess, I think it is Colin Baxter based off similarities in this shot and his "official" photo, but I could be mistaken. Maybe if someone reading this is more familiar with the team (or even able to pass the link to the photo on to the team) they could identify more players.

My favorite part of this photo is the differing reactions of each of the riders. Some are excited, some appear to be scared, some appear to be very scared, and one rider (the man in front of the rider in red who seems to be flashing the University of Texas "hook 'em horns" signal) appears to be unfazed by the fact the coaster is about to drop 150 feet at a 60 degree angle reaching a top speed of nearly 65 miles per hour.

I took this shot with my Tamron 28-300mm lens. I wasn't quite zoomed all the way in (the Exif data states the focal length was 209mm) and the 1/400 of a second exposure time was fast enough to capture the coaster with minimal blur. I am quite pleased with the resulting photo after processing and I hope that you are too. I did contemplate adding some clouds in the background via Photoshop to give the shot a little more contrast, but decided against it.

Please feel free to leave any comments or feedback either here on the post or in my online smugmug gallery. And remember, you can click on the photo to view it up to X3 in size as well. Thanks for stopping by!

Long Way Down