TooFatToRace Photography

SpeedFreaks endurance race

2009-10-26T19:54:00.007-05:00

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

2009-07-19T10:06:00.005-05:00

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

2009-07-16T21:21:00.003-05:00

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?

2009-07-13T07:48:00.024-05:00

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

2009-05-01T13:32:00.001-05:00

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

2009-04-21T08:06:00.000-05:00

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...

2009-04-19T19:21:00.005-05:00

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

2009-01-31T21:09:00.020-05:00

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)

2008-09-25T18:45:00.008-05:00

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

2008-07-16T13:38:00.009-05:00

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

2008-07-12T15:08:00.005-05:00

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

2008-07-11T22:39:00.003-05:00

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

2008-07-11T07:42:00.002-05:00

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.

Done!

2008-06-28T21:12:00.002-05:00

Ok, all of my shots of the 6/25/2008 W@W race have been posted (thanks to Potomac Velo for the link from the official page!). My gallery is here. See you guys next Wednesday.

Work in progress.

2008-06-27T21:25:00.008-05:00

I've got the shots from both the 5:30pm race and the 6pm race posted. I'll get the 7pm race up tomorrow (Saturday).

Standard disclaimers apply: These were quickly (and ham-handedly) resized and sharpened for the web. Electronic copies are free for the taking (for non-commercial use). Right click, save-as, done. If you want to buy a full-sized, lovingly processed digital or print version (assuming the full-res image is up to snuff), without copyright text, contact me at gmr2048 at yahoo-dot-com and we'll work out the details. If you want to use a shot commercially, contact me and we'll figure that out, too.

With a steady flow of riders finishing one race and starting the next, sometimes determining which riders belonged to which group was difficult. So I had to make some guesses. If you were running in the back of the 6pm pack, check the 7pm photo set. I may have accidentally put you in with the wrong group.

W@W2008, v1.0

2008-06-26T16:26:00.005-05:00

**UPDATE** All shots from the 530pm, 6pm and 7pm races are up (plus a few shots of racers pre-riding the course). The gallery is here.

I shot the first Wednesday@Wakefield race of the 2008 season last night. I haven't had a chance to slog through all of the images yet, but I did find this one that I thought I'd throw online as a placeholder. More to come.

Note to self: Flash photography is hard. Trust your f/1.4 lens more next time.

Being there

2008-05-04T20:21:00.003-05:00

This past Sunday saw the 2008 edition of the "12 Hours of Lodi Farm" mountain bike race in Fredricksburg, VA. Hard as it may be to believe, I actually managed to drag my butt out to shoot it. I was out "in the field" from about 8pm Saturday till 2pm Sunday with naught but a two hour nap between 5am and 7am Sunday. I have no idea how all of those solo racers can actually ride a bike for 12 hours. I could barely walk back to the truck from shooting in the woods at 5am without falling over. Kudos racers.

All of my straight-outta-the-camera shots are on my Pbase site.

As an aside, I've been trying to come up with a way to make the best use of my two paid photo services: Pbase (good for mass image storage and grouping by event) and Flickr (good for general photo exposure and comments/critiques). I think my new plan is to dump every decent image from any given event to Pbase, and then edit/tweak/process my favorite shots and shots of friends and post those to Flickr (with a link back to Pbase site for anybody who wants to wade through all of the images). This, in my mind, seems like a good use of the two services.

I took the liberty of liberating somebody else's map of the trail network at Lodi from the official race web page. They had it as a 7MB TIFF download. There's no need for that. I converted it to a JPG and reduced its size by an order of magnitude to about 600kb. Much more handy size.

2008-04-28T10:31:00.005-05:00

How to be a great photographer: "f/8 and be there"

Why I'm not a great photographer: That whole "be there" part.

I had nothing but good intentions of going to shoot the Greenbrier Challenge mountain bike race this past Sunday. Unfortunately, something came up and I wasn't able to make it.

Looking at local Flickr user extraFunky's shots of the event, there was some good shootin' to be had. Soft lighting, sloppy trails, muddy riders. Man. Wish I would have been there!

Hopefully things will pan out better for next weekend's 12 Hours of Lodi Farm race.

TooFat@work

2008-04-25T18:09:00.003-05:00

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Photo of your's truly behind the lens, by Jim Folliard at gearshift.tv

For god's sake, somebody get that boy a sandwich, he's wasting away to nothing!

Next up on the shooting deck: the 2008 Greenbrier Challenge on Sunday.

Leesburg cont'd.

2008-04-21T17:14:00.004-05:00

The rest of my Leesburg Baker's Dozen photos are up. Check them out here, broken down (roughly) by hour. These are pretty much straight outta the camera. The only editing I've done is to resize them.

I'm sticking to my "free as in beer" ethos again this year:

If you want a copy of the web-sized version of the image (for non-commercial use on your blog, web page, whatever) right-click, save-as, done. I'd appreciate a link back to my gallery, or an image credit, but I'm not gonna be a hard-ass about it.

If you want an edited, fixed-up, full-res JPG suitable for 8x10" printing, email me. Assuming the full-res image is up-to-snuff, I'm gonna charge $10 for it. If you want an actual mailed print, it'll be more.

If you're a non-profit trying to save the world or something, email me. I'm a sucker for a good cause.

TooFatTwoOhOhEight

2008-04-20T19:25:00.009-05:00

The 2008 mountain bike racing/shooting season kicked off for me on Saturday with the Leesburg Baker's Dozen race in VA. Unfortunately, I had lost track of dates, and was surprised on Friday to find out that there was a race scheduled on Saturday. As I already had plans for most of the afternoon/evening hours Saturday, I decided to hit the race early and try for some shots in the pine grove section (which, while I quite like this shot, overall only went so-so):

My master plan then had me taking off for my other planned activities, and afterward, heading back out to the race for some night-shooting ('round about midnight).

I had a couple of specific shots in mind that I wanted to try after dark, and I think I managed to nail them pretty well. I wanted something with rider's light trails with the farm silo in the background (since this was a race on a farm, I thought it only appropriate):

And I wanted some shots from a high vantage point, showing the racer's light trails running through the field:

After spending most of my daylight shooting hours in the pine grove, I decided to go back and try for some interesting "light-trails-weaving-through-the-trees" shots. Some worked better than others:

My next task is to figure out how to get the light-trail shots, but be able to hit the rider with a flash at the end, so they show up on "film" (similar to what this guy did). The trick is ensuring that I don't distract/blind the riders and cause them to ride off the trail into a tree.

I still have to weed through all of the almost 700 images I shot. I should have un-edited copies up in a day or two. I'll post back here when the task is complete.

Gearing up (so to speak)

2008-01-24T07:55:00.000-05:00

So, looking forward to warmer times (probably something to do with to the high-of-20-degree days we've been having around here lately), I decided to post up links to a few of the local favorite MTB races coming up this spring. I hope to shoot all of these, but I'm sure conflicts will arise.

Leesburg Bakers Dozen Saturday, April 19, 2008

Greenbrier Challenge Mountain Bike Race April 27, 2008

12 Hours of Lodi May 3-4, 2008

12 Hours of Cranky Monkey Saturday, June 28, 2008 Quantico Marine Corps Base

Cranky Monkey Series
* Race #1 - 7/27/08 - Wakefield Park - Annandale, VA
* Race #2 - 8/10/08 - Fountainhead Regional Park- Fairfax Station, VA
* Race #3 - 8/24/08 - Quantico Marine Corps Base - Quantico, VA

Wednesdays at Wakefield series (hopefully details coming soon). The nice woman who's now running the PVC website contacted me the other day asking to use some of my photos on the site. So look for some of my shots of PVC racers on display when the revamp is complete.

Blowing the dust off...

2008-01-23T09:47:00.001-05:00

I know. Been mighty quiet around these parts, hasn't it?

Winter is light on MTB races, and heavy on cyclocross races. While 'cross racing seems like a fine sport, it isn't my favorite. I imagine shooting it would be cool enough, but it's much harder for me to motivate to get out to a 'cross race. Ergo no cross photos = no bike photos (not counting drunken personal road cycling outings with friends) = no bike-blog posts. Sorry racefans.

An email from the woman re-vamping the Potomac Velo web page prompted me to invest a little time in this dormant blog. Seems she's going to be revamping their site and asked to make use of a few of my 2007 race photos. Which is cool with me.

I revamped the list of photo galleries on the left side of this page. Listing all the races I've shot in reverse chronological order, instead of just pointing a single link over to my Pbase site and making you wade through the galleries yourselves.

Look for another post in the next day or two. After that...who knows? Spring can't come fast enough as far as I'm concerned.

Dirt Crit

2007-08-08T08:30:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday saw the Dirt Crit edition of the Cranky Monkey race series. As usual, I was out there TooFatToRace stylie, sitting on my butt in the weeds, camera in hand, sweat oozing from... well, it was pretty hot.

For those who want to cut to the chase...the photos are here. Broken down by race start time. 8am, 10am and 12pm.

The nice thing about the Crit format is that the course is relatively short, so the riders do a bunch of laps. Therefore, I had lots of opportunities to shoot each rider.

Shooting race after race at the same park (this is the...um...4th one this season, I think) leads to a lot of similar looking photos. Trying to find a different angle, I spent a good deal of time under the cover of the trees this week. I was shooting at a fairly large log crossing. I strategically positioned myself so I'd be able to catch the hotdogs flying/jumping...

or running over it:

...and also get the more conservative riders who went around it

The results were pretty good (IMNSF*ingHO).

I was also using my new flash mod, with my homemade battery pack mated to my high-tech Sigma flash (as opposed to my old low-tech Vivitar flash). That worked out pretty well, but the Sigma flash did crash on me a few times. This has happened in the past and was supposedly remedied by me sending the unit back to Sigma for reconditioning. Apparently, it needs some re-reconditioning.

Here's one of the shots where my Sigma let me down. My buddy JoeP showing off his mad nose-wheelie skillz:

And here he is again on the next lap, when my flash was behaving itself (but the photographer couldn't keep the subject in the friggin' viewfinder). Apparently, that nose-wheelie thing is intentional:

To end on a photography note: I'm beginning to wonder if the Canon 24-70mm lens wouldn't be a wise investment. The Sigma 24-70mm lens that I use seems to take a couple of seconds before focus-locking on the target. The Canon lens has internal motors which should alleviate this. Maybe I'll just rent the Canon for a test-drive before dropping the cash on a purchase.

Pimping a friend

2007-07-20T07:44:00.000-05:00

My buddy Ben has posted his photos from the third W@W race. See them in all their glory at his gallery. Cool stuff!