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Trying to be creative at a bike race with the X100

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Ray Sachs

Ray Sachs

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Our little town has a criterium race every summer that really brings in everyone from the surrounding area, as well as lots of top regional pros (and a few national ones). Its always a lot of fun. This year I walked up (the course comes within about two blocks of my place) for about an hour just on the edge of darkness, so I started shooting in good light and continued until it was pretty dark. And the shooting went from some stopped action to a lot of motion blur and panning as it got darker and shutter speeds necessarily got slower. And those blurred and panned shots turned out to be my favorites! Anyway, here's what I got - all processed in various different ways in Color Efex Pro - the colors are manipulated a bit, but the "special effects" are straight out of the camera...

To set the scene:





A couple of standard racing shots in good light:





Little bit of people watching:





And, finally, the blurred and panned shots...









-Ray
-------------------------
http://www.flickr.com/photos/20889767@N05/collections/72157626204295198/
 
As a cyclist I've been to quite a few events. Great perspective on your 'shoot'. Nice alternative to the frozen action shots of riders and peloton. My favourite is the 7th. Good work!
 
I was a fixie rider waaaaaay before it was hip. Now my knees are too old for much fixed riding (although I still have one bike set up that way - flip flop hub though so it can be a SS coastie also) and I have no idea where all of these alleged fixie hipsters can be found. I still see the ocasional messenger riding a fixie, but they've been riding them forever.

-Ray
-------------------------
http://www.flickr.com/photos/20889767@N05/collections/72157626204295198/
 
Nice work as usual Ray.

My picks are "Little bit of people watching" and the last 3.

Regards
--
Paulo Abreu,

'It is not worthy to make a video of your life - just keep the best moments in
pictures!'
 
I know you started shooting in daylight and went into the night, but I would have used maybe three Kelvin values for the series, daylight, dusk, and night palettes. Each pic seems to have a different Kelvin value. I shoot RAW so I often tweak WB to get consistent color values across a set of images shot in different light, or at least get a few grouping of images with equivalent color values.
 
I think that's the processing more than the actual WB. I was playing around with different filters in Color Efex Pro and I was all over the place with the finished results. When I look at the original OOC files, there's not that much difference. A few directly under streetlamps are a little off, but not much. To be honest, I do so much more B&W than color that I rarely obsess over WB. And on every other camera I shoot RAW, so its real easy to tweak if I'm off. But I usually shoot jpeg with the X100, so I should probably get on it a little bit more.

-Ray
-------------------------
http://www.flickr.com/photos/20889767@N05/collections/72157626204295198/
 
I'm not a fan of the "grunge" look, but that's merely a matter of taste. I very much like your coverage of this event, and your use of both stop-action and motion-blur to capture the feeling of the event!

Your images demonstrate well that, in the right hands, the X-100 is a capable image making machine.

Very well done.
 
I really enjoyed this set--you did exactly what all photographers should strive for: look beyond the obvious and get creative. Yeah there is some processing involved (that I liked) but the shots are interesting to begin with. I turned down shooting at a bike race this weekend because I thought it would be boring--but now I know I was wrong. Thank you for sharing!
 
Hi Ray,

Really nice set...on the photo no 7..the two blurred bikes..and focused background crowd...what approx were your settings there..was the composition a "happy accident"?
Great atmosphere you have managed to convey-congrats
 
Allbuzzedup said:
Hi Ray,

Really nice set...on the photo no 7..the two blurred bikes..and focused background crowd...what approx were your settings there..was the composition a "happy accident"?
Great atmosphere you have managed to convey-congrats
Click to expand...
Thanks again. I was playing around with different shutter speed to get that shot. I took several at various different speeds. Too slow and you couldn't even see the shape of the cyclists, just sort of a ghost. To fast and the action got too static. That one was at f2 and 1/60 of a second. At the speeds the riders were going down that straightaway, all of the shots are accidental, with the hope that a few of them will work. I'd just focus and snap several shots as the riders came through my spot. Many misses, a few hits. On the panning shots, with the blurred backgrounds but occasionally in-focus riders, I was using a slower shutter speed, more like 1/15, and sweeping the camera along with the riders as I snapped. Again, more misses than hits but a few hits that worked surprisingly well.

Hey, its digital - doesn't cost anything to try things! ;)

-Ray
-------------------------
http://www.flickr.com/photos/20889767@N05/collections/72157626204295198/
 
Love the unique artsy feel. You went steps beyond the norm and pushed the envelope. I wish some of the naysayers could see these extraordinary images.
--
Don't take life too seriously you're not getting out alive anyway
 
And succeeding.

Very interesting pictures. I really enjoyed them.
 
Since the Tour de France has just finished and we have been inundated with crystal clear images from every angle, your last three shots come as a welcome change. As you say it is digital so why not try something different. Thanks for the inspiration.
 
Funky stuff Ray. How did you the Polaroid edges? My X will be sold today on EBay. I'll miss it.
Ray Sachs said:
Our little town has a criterium race every summer that really brings in everyone from the surrounding area, as well as lots of top regional pros (and a few national ones). Its always a lot of fun. This year I walked up (the course comes within about two blocks of my place) for about an hour just on the edge of darkness, so I started shooting in good light and continued until it was pretty dark. And the shooting went from some stopped action to a lot of motion blur and panning as it got darker and shutter speeds necessarily got slower. And those blurred and panned shots turned out to be my favorites! Anyway, here's what I got - all processed in various different ways in Color Efex Pro - the colors are manipulated a bit, but the "special effects" are straight out of the camera...

To set the scene:





A couple of standard racing shots in good light:





Little bit of people watching:





And, finally, the blurred and panned shots...









-Ray
-------------------------
http://www.flickr.com/photos/20889767@N05/collections/72157626204295198/
Click to expand...
 
eastvillager said:
Funky stuff Ray. How did you the Polaroid edges? My X will be sold today on EBay. I'll miss it.
Click to expand...
Funky yes - I guess good or bad is in the eye of the beholder... ;)

The polaroid edges are courtesy of Nik Color Efex Pro - it has a filter with Polaroid in the name that will do those borders/edges. It also does other stuff, some of which can be turned off and some of which can't. It leaves a particular color cast also, which I like for some shots and not for others. So I use it sometimes but not that often since this batch (when I'd recently discovered it and was using it too much!).

Glad you're digging your G3 - sorry the X100 didn't work out. I sold my GH2 and got an EP3 and its a pretty remarkable camera. Not nearly as good as the X100 in low light, no OVF, and the shutter makes quite a racket (having gotten used to the pristine silence of the X100 and GRD3), but its awfully versatile and incredibly fast in pretty much everything it does. I doubt I'll use it much for street shooting, but its pretty good for everything else. The X100 is a keeper for me, but it wouldn't be if it was my only camera...

-Ray
-------------------------
http://www.flickr.com/photos/20889767@N05/collections/72157626204295198/
 
stop trying so hard. be
--
Canon 40D. Canon 50mm f1.4, canon 135mm 2.8/soft focus, Canon 70-
200 f4L, Canon 24-105L.
 
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