Mountain Biking Photos
Panasonic Lumix GF1 saves the day.
Way back in February Nick and I went out on a very wet day to come up with a plan for a forthcoming magazine cover. We had a tight deadline, and a brief that the shot conveyed Spring, but the hills were still cloaked in a large amount of snow, and it was tipping it down. So not exactly the conditions we required.
Still over a coffee we came up with a couple of ideas and out into the rain we went, after all we were only supposed to be coming out with a rough draft so the rain wouldn’t matter too much, or would it?
I made sure Nick dressed up warm and brought his brolly so he didn’t get cold whilst I quickly set up the lighting putting the strobes in sandwich bags, and put my Canon DSLR on it’s tripod. I shot a few test shots for lighting and we were good to go.
Our photo spot of the day, was a bridleway that normally crossed a little stream. On the day though the little stream was a rather large torrent of water. Hmmm, quite spectacular, however deep fast moving water meant that it was somewhat difficult to ride a bike through. Not to be put off by such an inconvenience we performed some temporary stream modification.
I shot a few more shots, and we were getting close to what I wanted to achieve. It was now that my DSLR started to misbehave. Was it the battery? Was it a faulty card? Err no, it appeared that in the maybe 20 minutes the camera had been uncovered on the tripod it had taken onboard some of our Derbyshire rain. Now I’d heard of this happening before, so it probably wasn’t terminal for the camera (and as it turned out wasn’t). However it did mean that for the time being it was caput.
Nevertheless I was 90% there with the shot that I wanted. I was travelling light, so no second DSLR body with me, just my relatively new Lumix GF1.
I swapped the flash trigger onto the Panasonic with its 20mm fixed lens and kept on shooting.
Back home I downloaded the Canon’s pictures, and as I thought they weren’t quite conveying what I wanted to show. Frustrating. So, next I downloaded the files from the Lumix and amazingly there were a couple of crackers. I say amazingly, as this camera was producing pictures that were near enough as good as those coming out of the Canon.
I uploaded them to the editor, and they chose one of them for the job. No need to go and reshoot anything, job done.
….and here’s the magazine cover.
A great little camera that holds it’s own with its bigger relatives.
Hit The North - Winter v2
Hit The North returned to Phillips park Whitefield, for two hours of bike racing. Cool but sunny, and moist going under tyre.
200+ photos to ogle or purchase in the gallery.
Racing
Up the Hill
The Aftermath
Sleepless in the Saddle Photos now up.
There’s a few more to upload, but the vast majority of pictures are up now. I’ve certainly not got one of everyone, though there are lots of good ones of some folk.
Still the podium ones to upload though.
Click here to search by rider number. Type SITS followed by rider number. There are a few as always where I couldn’t make out the rider number, so if you want to browse the gallery, click here.
Rider 458 at speed.
The Grassy Hill of Doom
Crossing the finishing line.