This post was originally written for, and appeared here, at hooniverse.com.

Speed week is about half over for 2012.  With the end of the weekend, most of the onlookers have gone home and the serious racers linger on the salt.  It remains to be seen which records will stand and which will fall.  What we do know is that it was a beautiful weekend on the Bonneville Salt Flats.  

Click past the break for some photographic highlights from Bonneville Speed Week.

The Salt Flats are a special place.  I suggest that you put this event on your bucket list.  Even for people who aren’t interested in cars, being on the salt and experiencing the vastness, the brightness, the flatness, and the desolation is worth the price of admission ($15 dollars a head for a full day).  If you happen to be a snail or a slug or a vampire, maybe skip it, but otherwise, go see this place. 

The flats are, in my opinion,  the single greatest place in the world to take photographs of cars.  As I worked with my editing software, almost everything I tried, save cropping, was followed by a click of the “undo” button.  The black and white button did make a nice effect in the photo below, but it was one of very few changes I made to the shots. 

This is a friend who was participating in a photo shoot with professional photographer Mitzi, who specializes in pin-ups, hot rod, and rat rod photography.  The ’36 Ford in the background was an accidental passerby. 

Yes, that’s a 1952 Buick, just like Fat Christine, with an inline 8 cylinder engine.  It had some great intake mods, and to top it all off, the exhaust actually exits the portals in the fenders on the driver’s side. 

It rained quite a lot Friday night, which made the salt a little rough and wet in some areas. On the plus side, it helped me out with this picture.

All Images: [© 2012 Scott Ith, All Rights Reserved]