Wirth Classic Cup CX

I tried and failed last weekend to get a good, tight shot of wheels splashing thru mud, so I tried again this weekend to get the same kind of shot in the soft dirt. I got one that I'm really happy with — the first pic in my slideshow. I have no idea who it is in the photo, but the skull socks make it just that much cooler.

In general I tried to be a little more creative this week. Instead of just getting "sports action" pictures of individual cyclists, I was going for more "art" and composition. I was trying to capture the ambiance of the event. The autumn colors helped, and so did the overcast sky — it's like an enormous softbox.

Walked/jogged around the entire course at least two full times, looking for the most interesting vantage points. Found a spot in the woods, just before the barrier with all the hecklers, where there was loose dirt in a right-hand turn. Good location for skids, flying dirt, and a few harmless crashes. At another location, I got this photo that I especially like. It just seems so weird for a line of cyclists to be parading thru the woods to make a u-turn.

Stuff I missed:

• bike-pushing after a barrier (Bruce at skinnyski got some good photos of this)
• the whole party atmosphere around the hecklers

Misc:

• my daughter's busy working on a senior paper, and my wife's finishing her master's thesis. so when I got home I mowed the yard and then took a nap; I didn't get access to our home computer until midnight, and didn't finish my slideshow till 3:30 am. yawn...
• Something I've learned (I remember learning this last year, but I forgot it and had to relearn it): stick with 1/500 sec or 1/750 to stop action; don't expect 1/350 to do the job, especially if riders are streaking right-to-left or left-to-right across the frame.
• 1/45 sec seems just about ideal for panning to get background blur.
• wide-angle photography: that's one of the fun things about this sport; you can get pretty dang close to the action. I really really want a superwide lens though; 18mm (27mm in the old film world) just doesn't always cut it.
• Worried that many of my photos are too "warm" or yellowish. Wish the camera had a color temperature dial for adjusting the white balance.
• I keep thinking about sticking my camera on a monopod, poking it out there snug up against a barrier, and tripping the shutter remotely. I wonder if that's feasible.
• Finally, I've started resizing the files (for upload to flickr) using a PaintShopPro script instead of Jasc Image Robot. That preserves the EXIF info for each photo.