Beautiful morning skies, mild weather, and the rolling hills of Monterey County surrounding Laguna Seca. Sounds like a dream right? Rewind to Saturday night at around 1:00am (technically Sunday, I guess). Drew decided to go home and sleep because he is still recovering from shoulder surgery, so I went to SF for business. Yes, the vinyl business runs late hours sometimes… Anyway, long preamble short, I ended up getting to sleep at about 4:30am and we had to wake up to hit the road for Laguna Seca by 6:00. Ah, life is great.
It wasn’t too bad though, after all we were headed out to see the baddest-ass biking that norcal has to offer. After arriving at the track and BSing our way past the guards, we stopped in our favorite super secret parking spot at worker camping by the firing range for some spicy photog-on-photog action.
In between shuttling bikers from the finish line to the starting line, my Mom picked us up and took us to the top of the downhill course where we planned on shooting most of the action. She plays a huge role in the Turner Bicycles factory race team that my little bro Graeme is a member of. Everything from sponsor-finding, website maintenance, trip planning, to making food for the riders, towing gear to/from events, and so much more. You’re killing it Mom, keep it up!
I had Joe’s 20mm 2.8 so I planned on trying for some sweet wide-angle pan shots, and Drew brought his remote flash setup out to try for the first time in settings like this. Above is a test shot from when we were aiming the flashes. Teehee.
Our main goal in coming to Sea Otter was to give my bro’s team some good shots to use for publicity stuff, but it was a lot harder than it sounds! With a multi-mile course, the team riders would only be getting two runs during practice, and one race run. That meant that between me and Drew, we could only get 6 shots of each person. SUPER iffy. To make matters worse, Graeme had suffered a mechanical failure and was done with practice before we even showed up.
I was about to say “we didn’t end up with ANY good shots of the team riders from the event” but I found this one! Drew had no idea it was one of the right guys, in fact, this was during a practice run and it was right when we initially pulled out the gear. One of his first shots of the day.
Disobeying the gods of photography and shooting straight into the sun is fun sometimes. Yay flares.
Graeme: “This generic bottle of water is #1!!!!!! Thank you, water!”
Drew’s flash shots came out killer. We learned a lot too, and will be 10x more prepared next time.
I am super stoked at how my pans turned out. I only got down to 1/30 or so, so no 1/15 challenge here, but to the photogs who read this, I implore you to shoot something with as many moving parts as a kid on a bike at less than 1/30. It’s bloody difficult.
Most of the time, the only thing not moving is their head… if you’re lucky!
How’s this for random? While we were playing with the flashes, this guy wearing a Michigan sweatshirt came out from behind a tree to say what’s up to Drew. Turns out it was videographer Mark Lenardon! He was there shooting for the Kenda Tires Pro MTB team. Apparently when you work for Kenda, you get to participate in all their various racing endeavors! Fun stuff!
This is my favorite flash-shot from Drew’s set. I love how you can see the riders face. It reminds me of Larry Chen’s in-car flash drifting shots.
Spectators at biking events remind me of old school Rally pictures I’ve seen. The Sea Otter Classic usually has a ton of spectators, in fact, more than I usually see at the Monterey Historics. I think it’s mainly because of how they use the facility. Regular motorsports events only have the actual track surface to work with, whereas Sea Otter has at least 6 events going on at once. Downhill near the gun range, a XC course that goes all the way into Seaside and back, dual slalom, trick comps on big dirt jumps, and road-bike racing on the actual track.
After the team had passed and we basically missed our shots, we ventured down the course towards the car. This is the famous “log drop” section which features a super-long jump into a flat out downhill straight and up another hill before the next major obstacle. Somehow the path to where I wanted to shoot led me through this bush, so I decided to grab a few shots peeking out of it. BTW, Drew is on the right in this picture. No, not the gray-shirt guy, he’s actually right in front of the lowest-right bush. The next pic will make you sh*t bricks.
Somehow, he was shooting the same guy at the same time as me! THAT’S how far you can see with the 300. See me there on the left? Such an awesome picture. Upon seeing each others shots, Drew and I shared an immense high-five.
I also saw this awesome-shirt-kid and had to grab a shot. He was heckling the riders with his bullhorn the entire event, and it was great. The ability for the athletes to hear exactly what the hecklers are saying is one of the beauties of non-motorsports. LOL.
I grabbed a shot of Drew with my film-cam on the way down the hill. This looks like an African-safari shot, right? Drew should be a Lion!
Wouldn’t you know? Drew got a picture of me taking a picture of him on my way down the hill. Lions.
Personal fave.
On our way towards the car, Drew stopped by the shooting range to try out the accuracy of his 300mm F2.8L, and I shot him while he was shooting.
Deadly!
See the resemblance?
The depth of field at 20′ on the 300 is truly remarkable. This lizard was longer than the DOF was!
This made shooting the Lizard ridiculously difficult. Here he is running out of the DOF again…
-Geoff