Bike Race (pics)

The first (annual?) San Francisco Grand Prix bike race was held yesterday right in the heart of the city, and featured 3 time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and the Postel team.

This was a grueling 127 mile event with 10 long laps that included the extremely steep Filmore street which is close to a 20% grade I believe. The crowd was going nuts cheering the riders as they struggled up this hill time after time.

Most are not amazing pictures, but I thought there may be some other cycling fans who would like to see these.

http://homepage.mac.com/daviddodd

With whot camera did youtake this pictures?
They looks very good.

David Dodd said:

The first (annual?) San Francisco Grand Prix bike race was held
yesterday right in the heart of the city, and featured 3 time Tour
de France winner Lance Armstrong and the Postel team.

This was a grueling 127 mile event with 10 long laps that included
the extremely steep Filmore street which is close to a 20% grade I
believe. The crowd was going nuts cheering the riders as they
struggled up this hill time after time.

Most are not amazing pictures, but I thought there may be some
other cycling fans who would like to see these.

http://homepage.mac.com/daviddodd

Click to expand...

Hi David,

Great pics - I was not sure how the 6900 would perform with action shots, but these are great. Did you set the focus manually in advance to get the great shot of the four cyclists? Love the expression on the kids faces

Cheers

Steve

David Dodd said:

The first (annual?) San Francisco Grand Prix bike race was held
yesterday right in the heart of the city, and featured 3 time Tour
de France winner Lance Armstrong and the Postel team.

This was a grueling 127 mile event with 10 long laps that included
the extremely steep Filmore street which is close to a 20% grade I
believe. The crowd was going nuts cheering the riders as they
struggled up this hill time after time.

Most are not amazing pictures, but I thought there may be some
other cycling fans who would like to see these.

http://homepage.mac.com/daviddodd

Click to expand...

I really, really like these, particularly the way that you've captured the event, not just the action. On all action type stuff that I've been to, such as a car hill-climb event, I end up with many pictures of one corner and different cars going around it, which soon gets boring. This gallery is completely the opposite - interesting, and well taken.

I love the "captive audience", "roof shot" and "filmore street" ones in particular. On one thumbnail, it looks like the guy in front on Filmore St is towing the other guy up, but it's telephone cables . Another (29) shows just how steep the hill is, which is no mean feat with a camera.

Looks like a great day, and damned hard work for the competitors! Thanks for sharing, I like bike racing so I really enjoyed this album.

It's given me a bit of insight to concentrate less on the action and more on the event, unless the action really is interesting and shows something about the day. Obvious, really, but I was wondering why my photo collections were boring - they're missing capturing the event!

Thanks again. You've inspired me.

Regards,

NickL.

NickL said:

I really, really like these, particularly the way that you've
captured the event, not just the action.

Click to expand...

I agree... You really captured the whole feel of the event. The Team Postal Lance #4 is just a great photo and framed wonderfully. YOu have many interesting angles on the race and the whole event. Really well done.

liza

I love the shot of Lance Armstrong captioned 'Thinking of Taking the Bus'.
I know I would under the circumstances..

David Dodd said:

The first (annual?) San Francisco Grand Prix bike race was held
yesterday right in the heart of the city, and featured 3 time Tour
de France winner Lance Armstrong and the Postel team.

This was a grueling 127 mile event with 10 long laps that included
the extremely steep Filmore street which is close to a 20% grade I
believe. The crowd was going nuts cheering the riders as they
struggled up this hill time after time.

Most are not amazing pictures, but I thought there may be some
other cycling fans who would like to see these.

http://homepage.mac.com/daviddodd

Click to expand...

Shots 07 (Bus) and 13 (Leaning into turn) are great shots! Did you use the 5-shot burst on 13?

Thank you to everyone for your kind comments on these pictures.

Due to the terrible events on the east coast, I feel a need to wait a little while before responding to questions. But, please feel free to post, and I will respond eventually.

David

Hi all - trying to slowly get life back to normal - and a small part of that is sharing here.

To get that fast moving shot of team postal, I believe I used shutter priority set to 1000/s, and since it was a typical overcast morning, I set the film speed to 200. I focused ahead of time at a spot on the road by half pressing the shutter button, but actually didn't even think of using the burst mode. Too bad, that would have been a good idea. The picture came out dark, so I did more than the usual post-processing in PS to levels and colors etc. The quality of the picture really isn't that great, but I still like it because I caught the moment. Most all of the other pictures were at 100 film speed and auto settings - the cyclists weren't exactly moving that fast up that hill.

Thanks for the positive comments about capturing the "whole" event - it just seemed like the city and the crowd were as much a part of the day as the cyclists.

The day was a good lesson in how hard it is to photograph this kind of event. Just finding a place to shoot in the crowd was at times the hardest part. Those shots on Filmore Street were all taken with the camera held at arm's length above my head, and I waited 1 1/2 hours before the start for those shots of Lance.

Thanks again for the comments - I appreciate it.

David