Burning up the road (Explored)

2006 Pontiac Sunfire

The Sunday Challenge: Panning

To obtain this shot, I had my husband drive by me in sun and in shade while I took about 20 photographs at various shutter speeds and angles. I liked this one the best. Although the slow shutter speed makes it appear as if he was flying by, he was only traveling about 15 mph.

The stripes on the car are genuine. In 2006, my husband learned that Pontiac Sunfires were no longer being manufactured. He had a 2004 Pontiac Sunfire 5 speed 4 cylinder front wheel drive car that he loved and he wanted to replace an older car that we had with another Sunfire. I was not picky about what type of car we drove, provided that it was red in color, probably to make up for a lifetime of driving only beige cars. My husband found a new red Sunfire that he thought fit his requirements at a Pontiac dealer in another state and bought it sight unseen. The dealer told him that the car had been detailed, which he thought meant that it had been super cleaned. It arrived and we discovered that detailing meant that it had racing stripes down the sides. We were the envy of high school students for quite some time. We also discovered what is was liked to be wrongfully stopped by the police just because you drove a red car. One stop was at night when the police were enforcing the "Move Over" law that required cars to move out of the rightmost lane or slow down if changing lanes were unsafe if a police car was in the breakdown lane with its lights on. Seeing a police car in the breakdown lane, I had slowed down because there was another car in the middle lane making a lane shift unsafe. I had not yet resumed highway speed when the police car pulled out and pulled up behind me. I drove into the breakdown lane and stopped. The police officer got out of his car and approached with his hand on his holster. The look on his face when he realized that the car was occupied by an older couple and not a bunch of rowdy young men who might have drugs or alcohol was priceless. Needless to say, he did not give me a ticket, which was appropriate because there had been no reason to stop me in the first place.


AIMG 7531