Snotcycle, 2012 edition. Now with more actual biking!

For last weekend's 2012 installment of Snotcycle, Mother Nature decided to treat us to a cool day, completely snow-free (a nice change from last year!). Held in a new semi-open-to-the-public trail system, it was a nice change in scenery (even if that scenery was only the brown greyness of winter woods). I spent most of the race at a water crossing, having found no other really interesting photo op in the woods. I've posted my shots at my new and improved(ish) Smugmug site. Give them a look and see if I managed to catch you. I missed some of the Cat 3 race, unfortunately, and had to cut out before the singlespeeders took to the course.






Thanks to the race organizers for putting on a great event, and to the racers for giving my a reason to freeze my *** in the woods instead of sitting home on the warm couch!

Better later-er-er than never-er-er.

Potomac Velo Club's Wednesdays at Wakefield series is in full swing. In fact, it's 75% done and, were it not for a fortuitous thunderstorm this afternoon, would be 100%.



I was out of town for the first race, but shot the second and third. The shot above might be my favorite (personally shot) mountain bike race photo ever. I tried to re-create the magic the following race, but the lack of dust in the air made the shots less magical.






The third race in the series may have been the first W@W race at which I spent zero time shooting the downhill woop-de-do section. That section usually gets you the best air-catching shots, but after years of parking myself there, I need to find new angles. Stay tuned for the resulting photos.

Better late than never!

Oh hi.



I just realized that Potomac Velo was directing people here to view my pix of their Greenbrier Challenge MTB race. I shoulda figured that out weeks ago, but as I haven't gotten any angry emails, I'm guessing I haven't had much traffic 'round these parts.

Anyway, the photos from the race are hosted (for the time being) on my Pbase site, here:

http://www.pbase.com/gmr2048/2011greenbrier

I'll also update the list over there

<------------

at some point and put Greenbrier at the top.

Ahhh, blog. Welcome.

So welcome back, faithful blog!

I changed domain registrars from that hideous, busy-paged, up-selling, misogynistic, elephant killing GoDaddy to the white, clean and neat Hover.com. Took me a couple of days to work out the DNS forwards and settings so we were offline for a bit...but I doubt anybody noticed. And we're back!

This past weekend I shot the Potomac Velo Greenbrier Challenge MTB race in Boonsboro, MD. The photos should be posted tonight or tomorrow. I'll post again when they are. I just wanted to post something so people wouldn't think this page had gone the way of the dinosaur.

Aieeee! Crap! Last week's Wednesday at Wakefield race

So I meant to post this last week when it wasn't a week late, but work got the best of me...

I got out last week to shoot the second of Potomac Velo Club's Wednesdays at Wakefield mountain bike race series. The night was cool and comfortable (compared to what's predicted for tomorrow's event). The shooting with the new 7D was amazing. I fired off roughly 1,070 images and of them, about 1,040 were keepers. Maybe not Sports Illustrated-keepers, but keepers.

Here are a few favorites:


Crossin' 'em up.


A bit of Photoshopery for fun.


Fast corner.

The rest of the gallery can be found here (and in the links over on the left). Hopefully this week's race will be a bit more timely spoken of.

Oh, for those of you into that sorta thing, I created a Facebook page or group or something. Come on over and join in the fun. Ok, so there's not much "fun" there yet, but I'm hoping fun people show up and bring some "fun" along with 'em. And beer. Bring beer, too.

2010 USAF Clarendon Crit

A few weeks back, I got out to shoot the 2010 USAF Clarendon Crit in Clarendon, VA. It's one of my favorite local road races to shoot due to the vibe and location.



I didn't have press creds this year, so I wandered the field as a spectator with a camera. I tried coming up with different photo ideas, but in all honesty, this year's shots look pretty similar to last year's.





The one thing I did that was new and exciting for me was to shoot HD video using my Canon 7D. I didn't have a tripod with me, so the video is simply braced against a barrier, so it's a bit shaky, but for a first try, I dig it.

I haven't the faintest idea how to embed video in a blog post, so if you're interested in seeing a < 1 minute clip, go here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gmr2048/4702262302/in/photostream/

.

Just like LL said...

"Don't call it a comeback...I've been here for years..."*



...I just haven't had much to say lately.

I finally got out to shoot something interesting (relatively, I guess). The 2010 edition of the Greenbrier Challenge mountain bike race was held this past Sunday in Boonsboro MD. I made the drive north and clicked off a couple of thousand images on my new(ish) Canon 7D camera. The day was overcast and threatened rain, but produced none (thankfully). The course was damp/wet and I settled in at a sloppy log crossing complete with a landing zone of roots and ruts about a mile from the start/finish line. Hilarity ensued. (Not really. There were a few crashes but thankfully none very bad. Everybody re-mounted their steeds and rode off.)



The overcast lighting and high ISO abilities of the new camera produced some great images. And the new AF system on the camera allowed me to come home with far fewer throw-away shots than my old 30D ever did.



Anyway...help pass the word to others who may be interested in seeing themselves in all their muddy glory.

Uh, edit to add, I guess a link would be helpful, eh? Sorry, I'm a bit rusty at this.

Greenbrier Challenge gallery.




* Have I used that line before? I think I might have.

SpeedFreaks endurance race

On Sunday, I had the opportunity to shoot the first (annual?)...

(Official artwork by buddy, world traveler and artiste extraordinaire Blue-Eyed Devil of Wrench-in-the-Gears fame.)

...SpeedFreaks Stage Race in Leesburg, VA. Brought to you by the same fine folks who run both the Leesburg Baker's Dozen race each spring, and last winter's SnotCycle, it's run on the same private farmland singletrack. SpeedFreaks was a two-day event, but I only managed to make it out for the second day.



After a bit of rain for Saturday's race, the Sunday portion couldn't have been more perfect. Cool temps and blue skies the whole day.



When I set out to shoot this race, my plan was to emphasize the fact that it was a fall race, as opposed to all those spring and summer races. I had a couple of ideas in mind, but mainly, I wanted some leaf color in my shots. I wasn't having much luck finding color around the evergreen/pine grove part of the course. While standing around considering my options, I had a chance meeting with Rob, one of the organizers. He offered to escort me to the back side of the trails, a section I'd never seen. I happily agreed and followed him across the fields.

At the far end of the trails, I found some cool rock-drop obstacles as well as some colorful trees. After wandering around looking for an appropriate place to set up, I finally found a couple of trees that offered some nice color. I hunkered down and snapped away as weary riders pedaled past.

Unfortunately, I couldn't spend the entire day out shooting the race, so after too few hours in the field, I had to pack up and head home. Once there, I posted my unprocessed shots from the day to my pbase gallery. I tweaked a couple of shots (seen above) and posted those to my main flickr page.

At the end of the day, I realized a couple of things:

1) I need a wider lens. A nice 10-20mm would be sweet. Either that or a nice full-frame Canon 5D Mark II. Whichever :)

and 2) I have *got* to get out and ride the race course. I know so little of the trails there, I don't even know what all I'm missing. The trails are private and only open for the races each year (and a few pre-rides). Since I shoot (and don't race), I need to get myself on board one of those pre-rides.

W@W #4, 7/15/09

My photos from the fourth and final (for '09) Wednesdays @ Wakefield race have been posted.

As usual, feel free to grab copies of the web-sized images for your own personal use (blogs, email to friends, Facebook, etc). If you want full-sized copies (either digital ($15) or print ($25)) let me know. Images on the Pbase site are batch-processed. Full-sized images will be individually hand retouched so they'll look better than the small ones.

Thanks to PVC for putting on a great race series. And thanks to all of the racers for giving me such great subjects to shoot! See you next year (if not before!).

W@W #4, 7/15/09

If anybody is anxiously waiting, the photos from W@W #4 should be posted on Sunday. Please spread the word. Sorry for the delay...I've got to duck outta town for my older daughter's lacrosse tournament.

-gary

Quiet 'round these parts, eh?

As usual, the summer is proving more busy than anticipated. I had hoped to shoot the 12 Hours of Lodi Farm, the 12 Hours of Cranky Monkey race, as well as the complete Wednesdays@Wakefield series. In reality I missed Lodi and the Monkey, and at best I'll hit .500 on the Wakefield series. 'Tis amazing how much time these babies take.



The good news is that I was able to make it out to the third installment of the Wakefield series last week (the photos are posted here). The shooting was same as it ever was. There's a high treeline right next to the most interesting part of the course (the fast downhill woop-de-dos) which casts it into shadow by race time (5:30pm) and deep shadow by race end (~8pm). So I spent the first part of the race shooting on the less-interesting part of the course that still had decent lighting.

This junior-class (possibly super-junior class) racer was my favorite of the day. 99.9% of all racers (and riders...including me) skip this ~18" high rock obstacle (also seen in the photo above), since there is an easy bypass next to it. Not this kid! He went up and over for no other reason than he could. And he did it with a cast on his arm! In fact, he was the only person to hit it during my hour shooting from this location (a hour that included the beginner as well as the hotshot singlespeed classes. Bravo!

After spending the early part of the race in the sun, I decided to head over to the downhill woops and try to get some acrobatic shots of racers catching air. By the time I got over to that part of the course, another photog had set up shop in the prime location. That, along with the high growth of vegetation along the trail forced me to try and find some other creative angles. I resorted to using on-camera flash while letting the camera automatically drag the shutter (allowing both subject and background to be correctly exposed). The results were pretty good.

Not sure what this week's race will hold. I'm kinda tired of shooting in the same two spots. Tho shooting practically anywhere else would require a full studio light setup. Which I doubt the racers would appreciate :)

No Hours of Lodi Farm

Sadly, due to a death in the wife's family, I'm not going to be able to shoot one of my favorite races of the year - 12 Hours of Lodi Farm - which happens noon to midnight, Saturday.

You racers have a good time. And try not to do anything interesting or particularly photo-worthy till next year, k? Thx.

Leesburg Baker's Dozen race photos posted

I've posted my shots from the Leesburg Baker's Dozen mountain bike race. The gallery can be found here.

The posted shots are free for the taking/use non-commercially (Facebook/blogs/whatever). A photo credit and a link back to the gallery is all I ask in return.

Full-res digital files are $15. 8x10ish" prints are $25 (assuming my source image is good enough to sell/print). Email me if you're interested. The posted shots are straight out of the camera (no post-processing). Any full-res file or print will be hand tweaked and should look better than the web version.

...essing...Processing...Processing...Proc...

Processing pix from the Leesburg Baker's Dozen race on Saturday. Shot roughly 700 shots. There's gotta be one or two worth sharing...right? Right?



We can only hope. Stay tuned. Pix, write-up and lessons-learned coming in the next day or two.

Off-season race

Today saw the first (annual?) running of the SnotCycle mountain bike race in Leesburg, VA. Run on the same farm course that the Leesburg Baker's Dozen race uses in the spring, this race gave me the unusual opportunity of shooting a mountain bike event in winter.

And I blew it.

I tried. Sorta. I showed up with an actual plan and everything: I wanted to use a long, fast lens (200mm f/2.8) and go for shots of racers with a really shallow depth of field. I arrived before the start of the first race at 10am (and at about 12°). I wandered the farmer's fields looking for suitable backgrounds to blur out (thereby highlighting the riders). The color options were pretty limited: stick-brown of the leafless trees, brown-spotted amber of the dormant grass fields (spots courtesy of the cow poo (yay!)), and waaaaay of in the distance, an occasional stand of evergreen trees, giving some life to the scene.

So I set up and waited. And waited. Aaaaaannnnndddd waited. I picked a spot that was about 75% of the way through the course, so it was gonna take a while for the racers to reach me. Why I waited on top of a hill where the wind could constantly cool me is beyond me. But that's what I did. Probably 40 minutes later, the first racers started streaming past. I moved around as I shot, jockeying for interesting angles/backgrounds. I half-heartedly fired off shot after shot. I just wasn't feeling it. I didn't want to shoot hundreds of shots of racer after racer after racer. That's what I tend to do at the local summer races. Sure, it's nice to be able to provide racers shots of themselves. And it will occasionally earn me a few bucks. But it's gettin' kinda boring.

I looked for opportunities to take more artsy/active/general-interest shots, but sadly, this course offered little (that I'm aware of) in the way of "technical trail features" (TTFs - log crossings, drops, water crossings, jumps, rocks, unusual obstacles, etc). So it was pretty much just shootin' racers racin' past. When run in one direction, there is a decent 1-2' drop where you can usually get the more acrobatic riders wheelie-dropping off. Not the most exciting subject, but more interesting than simply racers riding through an amber field of dead grass spotted with mounds o' cow poo. Unfortunately, the race today was run in the opposite direction, eliminating the one pseudo-technical bit.

So I wandered the course for a couple of hours, firing off shots hither and tither. In the end, I think I came home with only ~100 shots, and of those, ~30 were immediately deleted due to being out of focus because of my ridiculously shallow DOF. I've really got to get smarter and shoot with something between the 1' I did today and infinity. There's a lot of wiggle room in there. I'm not sure why I didn't make better use of it.

In a perfect world, all of my general rider shots would have come out like this one:



Unfortunately, not many did. A few more shots can be found in my flickr stream.

Blowing the dust off (sorta)

My bike shooting this summer was kept to a minimum with the birth of a daughter on July 25th. I did manage to make it out for a road crit in Reston VA. I'm not exactly sure why, but I never posted the photos here. So without further ado...













You'd think that with such small pool of bike shots, it would have dawned on me to actually post some, huh.

I may try to get out a bit this fall and shoot some cross races. But in all honesty, cross racing doesn't hold much interest for me (as either a cyclist or a photographer). Who knows, perhaps I've just not experienced it correctly yet to fall in love. We shall see.

MIA @ W@W #4

It looks like I may miss the fourth and final W@W race tonight. Kinda got a lot going on at the moment, and I don't think I'll have time to do what needs to be done and get to the race. Sadly, that puts my W@W attendance rate at only 50% this year. I had much higher hopes.

W@W #3, 7-9-08, photos are posted

My shots from the third Wednesday at Wakefield race are posted here.



I think the links to all of galleries (on the left) may actually be fixed, too. If you notice any problems, please email me.

Men at work

Most of the links on the left are broken at the moment. I renamed many of my Pbase galleries for easier reading, and didn't realize it would break every link pointing at them. Poor link design on Pbase's part. I'll go through and fix them all this weekend.

W@W #3, 7/10/08

Wednesdays at Wakefield
Take 3
7/10/08

After missing the second W@W race last week due to a schedule conflict, I was able to make it out to the third this week. I'm still going through the photos (and boy, is my "delete" button tired!) and will have them posted this weekend. Until then, here are a few shots I quickly processed last night:


Dharma.


The choke.


Feelink OK.


Pete (I think).


Wheelie droppin'

Every time I shoot, particularly bike races, I learn something new. This week, I learned that you should shoot from somewhere that the racers can see you. People tend to show off for the camera, which results in far more interesting photos than if they don't know you're there. I spent most of the first race sitting in a creek bed, shooting riders as they zoomed past. 99% of the racers had no idea I was there. As a result, there aren't too many shots like the wheelie-drop above. Most people just rode across the tiny creek. Had they known I was there, I bet there's have been some more interesting acrobatics.

The second thing I learned this week is that I need to spend more time considering depth of field when shooting. It's pretty easy to understand...at least in theory. But I still managed to completely fail in it's implementation. Even with my handy smartphone-based Java DOF calculator in-hand. My problem, I think, was that I was shooting at a spot ~15' away, and I was focusing *on* that spot. The DOF started at about 15' and went to infinity. Therefore, most of the riders that crossed at that spot were out of focus, while the trees and brush behind them were crystal clear. I suppose I should have focused on a spot maybe 10' away, which would have put the riders in that 15'-to-infinity zone, and therefore in focus. That would have lead to many more keeper shots, and a less traumatized delete-key finger. Something to keep in mind for next time, I guess.

Edit to add: One more thing I learned (or re-learned, or simply remember) after numerous failed shots last night...shooting with really slow shutter speeds (1/60s, 1/80s, 1/100s) and panning with your subjects is quite difficult. Yet another contributing factor to the pile of worthless photos in the recycle bin today.