During a recent trip to one of my new favorite used bookstores in Los Angeles, The Iliad, I came across a collection of photographs by Ernst Haas.  For those unfamiliar, Haas was an Austrian photojournalist who spoke of "transforming an object from what it is to what you want it to be."  His photograph of a Spanish bullfighter, La Suerte De Capa, was particularly moving.  I started thinking about more contemporary events with humans and animals whose essence could be captured with blurred motion shots.  I wound up at the Golden Gate Fields racetrack in Albany, California and captured a number of images using a steady camera and low shutter speed.   This was from the first race with the horses and jockeys just leaving the gate.

It was shot with a Nikon D800 using a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens.