W@W #3 (7-18-07)

(Crossposted from that other blog of mine, since I don't know if anybody knows that this one exists yet).

The threatening rains held off, so a friend and I were able to go out and shoot the third Wednesdays @ Wakefield race last night. He got some amazing shots using some fancy off-camera flash techniques. Really cool stuff (and depressingly better than my own stuff!). Once he gets his images posted online, I'll put a link here (and on all the usual message boards) so people can see his work.

For my shots, I was attempting something different. (Different from Ben's stuff, and different from my usual stuff). I was using a flash while shooting at a really slow shutter speed and panning along with the riders as they passed. (Called "Dragging the shutter"). 1/80s, 1/60s, even down as low as 1/30s. Consider that I usually shoot at 1/250s and wish I could go faster (and still be able to use a flash), those are some slow shutter speeds. This gives a really cool effect when you can pull it off correctly. The problem is that its really hard to pull off correctly. I shot about 450 images over the course of the evening. I've only given them a cursory going over and I can already tell that there are a lot that need to be culled. I think I got a few really nice shots. But for each nice shot, I probably have 20 or more throw-aways.

Anyway, I'll be processing/culling my images tonight, so hopefully I'll have them online by tomorrow. They'll be in their own directory here:

http://www.pbase.com/gmr2048/biking

I'll post to all the usual places when they're up. Thanks to the riders who had nice things to say to me last night. It's always cool to hear that people are seeing and enjoying your work.