Terrific shot, your photo has really the emotions and environment of the race.
Thank for posting the photo
FransThe aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means, and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again, since it is life. William Faulkner
The funny thing about this day was I thought it was going to be a total bust photographically speaking. The sun was at an odd angle and pretty high in the sky. The course was narrow and had lots of obstructions along the sides in the way of trees, signage, equipment boxes, hay bails and spectators. I tried going around the corner from the s/f line and it was even worse in the form of nuclear-ugly backdrops and traffic, it forced me closer than my 70-200 could frame a rider in most cases and there were just small pockets of sunlight with lots of mottled shade along the course. My usual style of shooting just wasn't working well.
The good thing was it just put me in a mood to forget about the 'safety shots' and just try all sorts of different lenses and really slow shutter speeds. It turned out to be a fun day of shooting with my wider angle lenses and it produced some really cool effects coming straight from the camera.
Jeff,
I think this is a great image! The motion blur works really well to capture the essence of speed that roadie's get while spinning. I think your pan is great! I am still working on getting good panning shots.
Two things that, if I may suggest, you might want to try for the future. My laptop is acting funny so I can read your comments about this photo so you may have already done these.
1) Use a flash to really capture the rider. Using a flash should 'freeze' the rider during the pan to get a little bit os a sharper image.
2) Try to lead the rider a little more. I would liked to have seen more frame on the right side of the image/the front of the rider.
