Experimenting with the Camera

My daughter was out training the other day with another girl and they were riding behind the motorbike.  I was on the bike taking some photos and working out how I was going to do it for the race coming up this weekend. 

Since the girls were motorpacing and right behind the bike most of the time it was too difficult to take photos so I took to taking photos of the scenery.  The sun was setting and put on a magnificent display.

Then it changed again and looked almost like it was on fire.

On the way back in the van, being a passenger for a change I tried taking some photos on the freeway.  It was getting dark so I slowed down the shutter speed to a few seconds.  I tried taking some photos out the front of the windscreen.  Here is one of my first attempts.

I ended up having to put the camera into the manual mode so that I could really control what I wanted.  For some reason when it is in shutter priority it wouldn't let me take photos at a few seconds.  After putting it on manual I was able to take some photos with the shutter being open for between 1 1/2 seconds up to 8 seconds.  I really liked the way the light dances around.

As we were going through the etags gates,  I discovered that I could get some lovely purple light.

I love the colours and tried to get as many as I could.

I haven't played much with the camera since getting it and I think it is about time I did.  I need to remember how much fun it is.  I used to love taking photos and I think the fact that I can see what I've taken straight away is going to make me love it all over again.  I can't wait to go out again and do some more.

Road Racing and Photos

Last weekend Blackburn Cycling Club ran its inaugural Warburton Road Race.  It wasn't without its problems, but I'm not going to talk about them here.  Really I wanted to talk about trying to photograph road races and the difficulties.

One of the first problems, or really the only problem is how?  Do I just take one photo of each group from the same place or do I move around?  Of course, who wants to stay in one place and only take photos for about 5 minutes.  The riders would go out and then come back, so you would get them twice, but it is better to get them in lots of places.

This is where the real problem starts, how do I move around?  I ended up using my car and followed the races, trying to get ahead when I could, and waiting at certain points for the riders to come past.  Isn't too bad doing it that way, but when the race is on a long windy road, then it does get hard.  I couldn't get past the riders, or it was really difficult.  There was quite a bit of traffic on the road, so when I would come up to a bunch of riders, I would have to wait my turn to get past them.

There was some beautiful countryside and I wanted to get some Graham Watson type shots, but it was too hard.  I probably should go and scout out places first and try to find good places ahead of time.  Doing it while out there was hard, trying to look for good places to photograph, watching out for cyclists, and trying to drive, don't make it easy.

I hope I did get some shots that showed what beautiful scenery there is around Warburton.  As for taking photos at road races, motorbike please.  I have got my helmet, and a motorbike jacket, what more do I need, oh yeah, a motorbike and someone to ride it for me.  Or just the bike, as it turns out I never got rid of my motorbike license so I can still ride one myself, now just need to convince the husband.