I paid the $10 general admission entry fee at Hollywood Park racetrack in Inglewood to celebrate the 144th running of the Belmont Stakes in New York but in California.  Hoping for a packed park on one of the busiest days of the year for horse racing, I brought my camera with a 16-35mm lens poised to photograph the people at the track.

For the first hour I photographed in color but I just wasn’t feeling it.  I changed the picture style to monochrome and increased the contrast and sharpness.   In addition, I cranked up the ISO to 2000.  Since most photos were taken indoors, in order to freeze the action, I would need at least a 1/125 of a shutter speed.  Also, I wanted a grainy look and feel, as if shot with a film.

Something to note when shooting RAW as I always do: The preview image shown on the LCD screen on the camera is a jpg version applying the picture style settings.  When you take the same RAW file into Photoshop or Lightroom there will be a noticeable difference between the RAW file to the back of the LCD.  In the case when shooting monochrome, as I did at the horse track, Lightroom opens up the files in color.  Don’t get alarmed.  Photoshop or Lightroom sees the RAW file as the name indicates – RAW – uncompressed and still having all information available to process.  The file still has all of its color information.  I have a preset in Lightroom to turn the images back to black and white matching the user picture style settings of the camera.

Here are some of the images. The first is my favorite from the day.

A gentleman smokes a cigarette between races at Hollywood Park on Saturday, June 9, 2012 in Inglewood, Calif.

The only one that looks better in color