Thursday, May 31, 2007

Good news, good news, not-so-good news


A couple of weeks ago, I sent my Sigma 24-70mm lens in to manufacturer for repair. It was having problems auto-focusing. Today I placed a call to Sigma to see where things stand. The word is...

Good news: Yes, there is a problem (aside from the photographer!).

Good news: Yes, it's fixable. Even better, the lens is still under warranty, so there should be no charge.

Not so good news: They're waiting on a part for the lens. It will be another two weeks before they expect to ship it home. If I had to guess, I'd say they'll have it even longer. Nobody ever meets the time-to-repair estimate in this world.

This is gonna be cutting things close. The Wednesday @ Wakefield race series starts a few days after the lens' estimated (and anticipated) return. I had a great time shooting these races last year and I'm really looking forward to this year. I guess worst-case, I could drop some cash and rent another lens for the first race. Guess we'll have to wing it and see where we are as race-day approaches.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

12 Hours of Lodi homepage updated

The fine folks at Teambikeworks.org have updated their homepage with "12 Hours of Lodi" race info. Once again this year, they feature one of my images, and give me a link back to my gallery (where -new for 2007- I'm trying to sell my wares instead of giving them away). Hopefully this will prove fruitful.

This year's image is of local rider Becky cranking up a hill on her NINER singlespeed. The only problem is that the image file on their site is god-awful if you view it in Firefox of Safari. If you view it in IE, it looks fine.

(Nasty GIF image removed)


I tweaked a copy of the image myself and sent it to them asking that they replace the existing image with the better looking one (for both our sake).



They wrote back quickly and said they'd try to get it fixed ASAP.

Update: TeamBikeWorks replaced the image with a better-looking JPG, but it's about 25% of the size.



Oh well. I'm done trying. Maybe I can get a job with them as their web developer. I'm no pro, but I've got basic skillz.

Friday, May 11, 2007

More Lodi


Here are a couple more shots from the 12 Hours of Lodi race last weekend. Just random people that I happened to catch in (what I think are) cool photos.





Ooh, and a little snake dood that I found hanging out in the woods.



Most likely and Eastern Garter snake, if you were wondering.

Monday, May 7, 2007

Lodi, 2k7


Third time's a charm.

For the third year running, I made the trek down to the 12 Hours of Lodi Farm in Fredricksburg, VA this past Sunday. I had hoped to get an early start, but a late night Saturday kept me in bed until 7:30am on race day. By the time I hit the trail with camera in hand it was nearly 9am.

Hometown favorites "The Big Meats" put in a decent showing this year, as usual:

D(Did somebody say 'fatBOY!'?)T:


Spearman:

(No, really...he races, too!)


and returning prodigal-Meat, Butch:


Also seen on the course was the pink fury M.C. RickyD:


And the mighty Gwadz:


The rest of the cast of characters, friends and strangers alike, can be seen in my pbase gallery. Spread the word far and wide. The images in the pbase gallery were dumped straight from the camera to the web. I didn't spend the time to tweak each one. Just so you know.

I think the time has come for a different tactic on my image distribution. In the past, I've freely given away my shots: low-rez, high-rez, it made no difference. My thinking was always "One day, when I'm more comfortable with my skillz, I'll start charging a little something for my efforts". Well friends, the day has come. As a pro-shooter buddy said to me recently "Your camera was expensive. Lenses are expensive. Gas to get to these races is expensive. Your time is valuable. You should charge something for your work". This fact was driven home as I filled my truck's gas tank to the tune of $53 on the way to the race.

So, in the spirit of open-source/creative commons/help-a-brother-biker-out, if you want only the small, low-rez copy of the pbase image for non-commerical use, feel free. Right-click, 'save image as', done. I'd appreciate a link back to the gallery if you use the image on your website, blog or whatever. At some point I'll put a CreativeCommons notice here (and in the gallery) so you'll know what you can (and can't) do with the images. For now, let's just say no commercial use unless you talk to me first. gmr2048 at yahoo dot com. I'm easy.

If you're interested in a full size, ~300dpi image, suitable for printing 8x10" (maybe bigger), that I've spent some time tweaking and perfecting. I'm gonna charge $10. Shoot me an email and we'll talk.

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Greenbrier

Here's another shot from Greenbrier. This one was a bit overblown, but I liked the way it came out. Not your (or "my") standard shot. The rider is Elsie Torresan. (Sshhh...she's Canadian). We'll never tell. We promise.


(Click the photo to see a larger copy)


Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Greenbrier photos posted

...and there was much rejoicing...


...yay...



I batch-processed* and posted all of my Greenbrier race photos over in my pbase gallery. Feel free to go over and look through them. I edited out the most hideous shots (lucky you!).

I was only there for the Elite/Pro race and the start of the SS/clydesdale/expert/everybodyandtheirbrother race, so there are few, if any, shots of people who actually may read this blog (sorry Gwadz, I missed you totally).




*="batch processed" means I didn't give each photo my undivided attention. I set rough parameters in my image editor and ran the whole bunch of them through. So the original images look better than the ones posted to pbase. Not that you particularly care...I'm just sayin'.