I love being able to walk a few blocks to a professional bicycle race. And it couldn't be better for spectators. The professional men ride around the 1 kilometer course 100 times. Spectators can access the inside and outside of the entire course so there are plenty of options for photographs. I was surprised at how few spectators attended this year, but was not surprised to see the abundance of photographers with very impressive equipment. I remember one year someone at this race telling me about panning. I think that was the first time I heard about it.
I took almost 1500 photos today, filling all of my memory cards. They are all loaded on my computer and I made a first cut at sorting them. I edited about 15, and picked my four favorites.
I decided to pick my favorite panning shot to honor the first place I heard about panning. I usually set my shutter speed to between 1/15 and 1/30 of a second to pan, but these cyclists were going so fast that I set it on 1/60 of a second for this race. In some of my panning shots, there is an illusion of speed, but in this shot it is definitely not an illusion--notice how the spectators are hardly visible at all. We could actually feel a breeze when the pack passed us.
Amazing that they can ride so fast and stay so close together. I've seen crashes other years but didn't see any this year. I did year about one, but only one, this year.
This is a breakaway, but they are in fourth and fifth place since an earlier three-man breakaway lapped the field and biked the rest of the race in the pack. Quite an exciting race!
One of my other favorites is a closeup of the pack making the hairpin turn. Quite spectacular. And they are riding on roads that have many imperfections.
