Wheel on Rail at Speed

The theme for the 2005 Trains Magazine / Canon Camera Photo Contest was "Trains at Speed", and this close up shot of a freight car wheel moving along the rail won the Grand Prize. Ironically, I used the Canon 20D camera I won as the Grand Prize in 2004 to take the 2005 Grand Prize picture. I experimented with several shutter speeds, and decided that 1/80 of a second was just right to balance between the amount of motion I wanted to capture while still maintaining enough detail in the wheel and the rail.