The Indy 500

We got up at 5:00 a.m. and were on the road by 6. It was about an hour's drive from where we were staying.

The plan was to come in from the east and park about a mile from the speedway. We ended up finding a spot on someone's soggy front lawn just one block off the main road, which was already packed with people trying to get closer. I was traveling with pros, though—friends who had been coming almost every year of their adult lives. They knew exactly where to go.

I think parking cost us $20. Honestly, it felt like a bargain.

After we parked, my friends headed to a tailgate to start drinking.

I ate a Pop-Tart out of my backpack and went exploring.

My backpack was probably heavier than it needed to be. The forecast kept calling for rain, so I packed three ponchos. I also brought three cameras, which had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with my inability to decide which one I wanted to carry.

Choosing a camera before leaving the house is torture.

Almost every time I finally commit, I spend the drive wondering if I brought the wrong one. Then, once I actually get there, I almost never regret the camera I chose.

I made a beeline for the finish line because I remembered from my previous visit that fans are allowed to walk across the track before the race.

Standing on it is strange.

The track is both narrower and steeper than television makes it look.

From there I walked through the grandstands, through one of the tunnels, and into the infield.

The Fan Fest area near the pits was packed. Every brand imaginable seemed to be trying to sell you something. It was so crowded I found myself barely taking any pictures at all.

What I really wanted was coffee.

I figured that wouldn't be difficult.

Somehow, it was.

I spent far longer than I'd like to admit wandering around looking for a cup before finally giving up and paying seven dollars for a Red Bull instead.

It wasn't what I wanted, but after being up since five that morning, it was close enough.

Eventually I wandered over toward the golf course.

I think this ended up being my favorite part of the speedway.

There was a huge field of drones laid out in perfect rows. I assumed they were for some kind of light show later. The crew setting them up looked understandably nervous anytime someone wandered too close. After seeing how carefully everything had been arranged, I tried to keep my distance.

I found a tree, ate a snack, and just sat for a while.

If you get there early enough, there's a berm overlooking the backstretch that seems like an incredible place to spend race day. If I ever came back with my family, I think that's where I'd want to be.

Next I headed toward the party area near Turn 3.

There were signs encouraging women to "bare it all," but I didn't see anything like that. Maybe social media has changed things.

The party definitely hasn't disappeared, though.

Even outside, the smell of weed was stronger than the race fuel.

I walked through the area a couple of times. Lots of people wanted their picture taken and would stop me to ask.

One guy even begged me to take my shirt off.

I politely declined.

One thing I really liked was how many people clearly treat this as a yearly tradition. Everyone seems to have their spot. Some people had elaborate camps set up with couches, decorations, televisions, and even living rooms built under tents.

"Couch maxxing," I guess.

From there I walked over to the Snake Pit.

I didn't buy a ticket, so I just circled the outside. You could hear the music from a long way off. There were also plenty of people who looked like they'd started celebrating a little too early.

It definitely seems like a destination all by itself.

For the start of the race I ended up near Turn 4.

The helicopters flew low over the speedway before the green flag, and then I turned around just in time to see those drones I'd photographed earlier creating a giant American flag in the sky.

People couldn't stop talking about it.

It was one of those moments where almost everyone around you stopped looking at the track and looked straight up instead.

Not long after that, the rain finally showed up.

After carrying around three ponchos all day, the weather delayed the race for about thirty minutes.

In the end, I never even took one out of my backpack.

By this point I'd already walked about twelve miles.

Once the race settled in, I was running out of energy, so I made the long walk back across the speedway to find my friends. They managed to squeeze me into their seats for the rest of the race.

I'm glad they did.

It turned into the closest finish in Indy 500 history. There seemed to be a lead change every few laps, and later I found out the race actually set a new record with 70 official lead changes. Drafting became a huge part of the strategy, and the final laps were some of the most exciting racing I've ever watched in person.

I'd definitely do a few things differently next time.

I'd spend more time on the golf course, wander a little more, and get over to a few areas I didn't make it to this year.

I'll also spend way too long deciding which camera to bring.

I almost always do.

And after spending half the morning looking for coffee that apparently didn't exist...

People ask this all the time, and the answer never really settles. Is it only CCD cameras? Anything before 2008? Is there a megapixel limit? Every few weeks the same debate starts over again.

I've started to think it never gets resolved because we're asking the wrong question.

Most of the answers focus on the camera itself: the sensor, the year it was made, the brand, the specifications. But I don't think that's what people actually fell in love with. What mattered was the file.

A digital photograph is a file before it's a picture. I don't mean that as a technical point. Before anyone sees an image, light has already been translated by a sensor that can only record so much. Color becomes numbers. Detail becomes something else. Every digital photograph begins with loss.

That isn't a flaw. It's simply how digital photography works.

For years, camera technology has been moving in one direction: more detail, less noise, cleaner files, more accurate color. Now AI has pushed that even further. We can remove objects, smooth skin, reduce noise, sharpen edges and fix almost anything after the fact. The goal is often to erase the evidence that the image was ever made by a machine.

That's never been the part that interested me.

Painters spent much of the twentieth century moving in the opposite direction. Instead of hiding the brushstroke, they let it remain visible. Some worked with damaged surfaces, rough materials, or visible imperfections because those things became part of the work instead of something to conceal.

Digital photography has its own surface.

Noise, color shifts, blooming highlights, compression, banding, softness—these aren't just technical defects to me. They're the visible behavior of a sensor working at its limits. They tell you something about how the image came into existence.

That's the part I find interesting.

One photograph I keep coming back to shows two people carrying surfboards along the shoreline at dusk. There's a pier disappearing into the distance and just enough light left to separate the water from the sky.

Described that way, it's a photograph you've probably seen hundreds of times. What makes it different isn't the subject. It's the file.

I intentionally raised the ISO higher than the scene needed because I wanted to see what that particular sensor would do under those conditions. The sky breaks apart into grain. The distant buildings soften. The air itself starts to feel textured. The image doesn't become less believable—it becomes more physical.

If I had cleaned the noise away, the photograph would still describe the same place. But it wouldn't feel the same. The file would have stopped saying anything about the camera that made it.

That's really what interests me.

I don't think of those artifacts as mistakes. I think of them as evidence. They aren't marks that I created by hand. They're the camera's response to the conditions I gave it. My role is deciding where to push the camera. The sensor does the rest.

Maybe that's why I don't spend much time worrying about what counts as a digicam.

The camera matters. But the file matters more.