1. Early in the season, before the first race was run, I visited Southern New Mexico Speedway on a practice day to see who was there and what they would be driving during the upcoming race season.

Lamar Skarda was there in his new 305 Winged Sprint, having moved up during the off season from Legends. This was Lamar's first time in the car, so I did what I could to get a few pictures while he was at speed on the track.

This photo wasn't particularly well framed or properly exposed, but what the heck, Photoshop should save the day!

2. The first priority was to crop the picture enough to bring the car forward and then adjust Shadows and Highlights to correct the exposure. It looks like I could have done a little more with the highlights!

These changes helped a lot, but I didn't like the background much at all, so looked around on my hard drive for a replacement.

3. This sunset photo was actually taken at the same track during a previous race. It might not fit perfectly, but I thought it would be fun to play with.

4. While the shadows are not in the right place, the picture did look nice when completed and Lamar (the owner/driver of the car) liked it enough to order a couple of prints.

This was one of my first attempts at creating composites in Photoshop and while far from perfect, it did make a much nicer picture than the original.

5. The next thing I knew, I was getting a call from Lamar, asking if it would be possible to change the numbers on the wing from 44 to 51. Lamar's Legend car number was 51 and he wanted to use the same one on his sprint car. #44 was the number used by the previous owner of this car.

By this time I did have some new pictures of the car with his number on the wing, but Lamar didn't like the position of the car in any of those shots as much as he did this one.

After a little more Photoshopping, I came up with this picture.

Lamar ordered a couple more prints!

6. I guess I should have anticipated the next phone call, because the car still was not configured properly for the class. Sure enough, Lamar had one more request.

He asked if it would be possible to add a front wing to the picture since that is how the car would be raced. After searching through my archived photos, I found something that looked like it would work.

Back to Photoshop and some more cutting and pasting resulted in this final version. Again Lamar liked it enough to purchase a couple more prints!

Don't you just love Photoshop?

PS - Thanks Lamar!