So I ran out of steam on the "Photo-a-Day" project. Who'd have guessed. It started to feel like a job (after only...what...8 days?). "Must...process...more...pictures...". So that was passively abandoned.
I did manage to get down to Fredricksburg, VA for a couple of hours near sunrise this past Sunday for the "12 Hours of Lodi Farm" mountain bike race.
(Click the picture to see the the gallery of shots I've processed so far).
I hit this race last year, and got a lot of cool shots out of it. Although I only had a bit over 2 hours of shooting time this year, I was hoping for similar results.
As far as the photos go, I started off badly. Super-stoopid rookie mistakes. I was keeping shutter speed vs. focal length in mind while shooting, but not shutter speed vs. high-speed mountain bikers tear-assing past. Consequently, my first bunch o' shots suffered from too slow shutter speed (even with the use of my crappy flash). The little LCD on the camera didn't allow me to notice my mistakes. Thankfully, as the sun rose, the light got better and my shutter speed was able to increase a bit (for those who care, I was shooting mostly AV mode), so my later pics were better in terms of blur (and lack thereof). I ended up shooting something over 300 shots in two hours. Many of those have been/will be tossed. So far I've processed and posted ~56 shots (at the link above) and have probably another 100 to do. I'm not doing much post processing on them. Just a quick resize and "save for web". If anybody reading this happens to see a shot of themselves that they want, email me (gmr2048 at yahoo dot com) and I'll be happy to send you the full size image (if it's not crap).
So the next time I get delusions of grandure and start thinking I want to become a pro photographer, I'll come back and re-read this entry and realize just how far I have to go.
