These guys are Swift

So, I've like... nearly three hundred pictures to go thru since Sunday. But I've got a 4 day weekend and not much going on, so I'm taking a stab at it now.

This past Sunday, I met up with the Swift club at Vic's on 30th for their group ride. These guys are chill and very sociable. They also have good discipline and manners, courtesy of ride leader Stephen Haydel. Some good reasons to ride with them.

This is the typical M.O. upon meeting at the shop. The pre-ride coffee klatsch, as everyone catches up on recent races, news, family life, etc...

There are always a number of nice bikes in any of the local Boulder group rides to ogle. Doesn't seem to matter much to these guys that we often take a route through the dirt secondaries. For you enjoyment, I give you: one brand new carbon Look with D/A, one Trek pro team edition SL (Trek-VW regional team bike), also with D/A, and one Pinarello Opera with Record:

More discussion as to route, where and how long we're going to be riding:

Ah, underway by 10.00, not bad. The ride leader always has us meet a few minutes early to accommodate the terminal flakes amongst us. The guy on the right of this shot is our intrepid ride leader, Steve.

Okay, these shots from down by the crankarm, are kinda fun right? Well you should see how many I eff up and have to delete! These are totally shooting blind. Examples include...

The Strap. I leave this thing on cos I'm terrified I'm going to drop the camera at some point... it makes a good handle for juggling the cam in and out of jersey pockets, but as you can see... it totally gets in the way, a lot. I have many deleted shots of The Strap. This one actually is kinda interesting in a way:

The... Random WTF Was I Shooting At?! shot... but it looks kinda cool as a duotone, mebbe. Or I'm just delusional from lack of sleep:

Once out of Boulder, we headed out the Diag, then up the hill on 52 heading east. This pair were crushing us going up every hill. I think the young lad is maybe about ten, but he seems to have the power to weight ratio rocking pretty good there. He and his dad come out on quite a few of the Swift rides. I certainly wouldn't want to ride the stoker cage (aka rumble seat) on some of the dirt washboard we encounter on Steve's routes, but this kid enjoys every ride and never complains a lick.

The marvellous thing about riding most of the highways out here, is the massively wide shoulders. Riding 3 and 4 abreast, isn't a problem most of the way out 52 as there's ample shoulder to accomodate it. This road literally goes for miles.

Christamighty, look at these wheelsuckers! Why do I always let myself get pushed up to the front, in the wind, anyhow? And how in the name of Dog does this 6'3" character think he's going to get any benefit whatsoever from sitting behind my stumpy arse?

Flat!! ... goes the call, and everyone dives off onto the shoulder to regroup and check their own tyres for debris. One of the perils of riding these wide bike lanes / shoulders in this area is all the glass, construction staples, nails, boards, roadkill, goatheads, tumbleweeds and whathaveyou that get scattered about on them. Fall and winter is the worst time for this, as we have more wind / rain / snow storms, the county sends the sweepers out less frequently, and any and every sort of puncture device known to bicycles will get blown, washed or tossed onto the shoulders to lurk in wait for an unsuspecting Michelin or Conti. Erik and Steve have rides later on in January and February, utilising some open space trails, that they are adamant are 'Armadillo-only' routes, due to goathead potential. The Swift rides post a disclaimer on their website asking people to please bring stout tyres to these rides. Ironically it was our intrepid leader himself who flatted this time around, although I'm not sure what would stand up to the monster steel construction staple he pulled out of the tyre. I've seen those things go thru rims.

Okay you'll recognise this next shot, because it was in the 'teaser trailer' post from Tuesday. This is the only time on this post I'm gonna get all photography dorky. There's a specific reason I converted this file to black and white, having to do with the composition. There's a lot going on in the colour file, and the lad's bright yellow jacket there becomes just too distracting. I'd rather have the focus be on Brad, the guy to the left. Cropping the shot would lose interest of the tree and the eyeline between Brad and Dave (left, background) conversing. See for yourself.
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Back underway, we head out to Weld County, and I take advantage of the mellow pace to jump off the front and take a decent shot of the group on the roll.

Soon afterwards, we turn off and embark upon one of the highlights of the Swift rides... the dirt detours. Check out this scenery, and not a car to be found:

Let me tell you, shooting pictures whilst barrelling along one-handed on rough washboard dirt (and getting them to turn out for anything) is NOT EASY. Especially since I was riding my backup bike, the Morgul Bismark, which combines upright jittery crit/tri geometry with a straightblade fork, unrelentingly stiff Easton 7005 oversized bladed tubing... let's just say it doesn't take kindly to this sort of nonsense and I had some interesting adventures in the potholes and sand pits. I took a lot of shots out here, and had to delete most of them, simply because I was bouncing around too much to get either a) decent framing or b) decent focus (not to mention The Strap and other issues).

Another okay shot, with a little lens flare (my especiality, it seems):

One of the nicest things about the Swift 'base' season rides, as I've mentioned before, is that these guys actually do ride at a base pace. Meaning one can take a look around at the scenery:

Now, I'm a big fan of male booty, especially well toned bike racer booty, but even I have boundaries. Casey, dude... those shorts make my head ache. I'm surprised his wife lets him out of the house like this:

Which way do we want to head back to Boulder? Ah, thanks Brad... that way:

Speaking of scenic, here's another nice view from the top of Lookout. pssst, Casey, I know you think yer shorts are loud enough to scare the drivers... but try riding a tad bit more right willya? (Steve only had to remind him about eleventeen times...):

Last but not least, just an all around faboo shot at the crest of Lookout, looking down on Boulder Valley and out towards the Indian Peaks:

The End,

LFR

Overwhelmed

Holy cats, it's late!

I shot over 300 pics today (Sunday... well it's Monday morning now...). Did a 4 hour ride with the Swift guys, then went down to LoDo and shot some night scenes. Here's a couple o' previews. Enjoy. I'll post the rest after some sleeeeeeep!

In the weeds

There's been a merger going on at work. Tuesday morning the final results were announced and the end result is that a number of folks are going to be laid off round the company. Our site got off relatively easy, but this stuff is never fun, and we are a small, tightly knit operation. By 12.30, everyone had retired to the pub to drown their sorrows. Over the next six months, we're going to be saying farewell to 7 staff.


I'm not a big drinker, so I said my cheers and took advantage of the late afternoon light to take some photos out at Boulder Reservoir. One was the sunset photo I posted on Wednesday.


Most of these shots are just random weeds and landscapes, things that I find interesting. I've done some effects work on some of them, mostly just shooting for experimentation's sake.


Reconnaisance via bicycle is quite possibly the best way to find good photo opportunities in any locale. You become so much more aware of your surroundings. You're going slow enough to actually see the details in the landscape, but not so slowly that you aren't continually re-inspired by something new around the next corner. You have a complete 360-degree view of your surroundings, unfettered by windows, and uninsulated from the sights, sounds, smells and excitement of it all. Every time I got on a bike, even before I had a camera, I was always framing shots in my mind, saying to myself, 'wow, that sure would be cool to have a picture of'.



I was big into art as a kid. I drew constantly and got pretty heavily into charcoal, inks and watercolours as a teen. For various reasons, I left it all behind and no longer pursue those particular outlets, but photography has really re-awakened the creative drive within me.

Zen meditation teaches a student to focus by striking a bell or gong, then listening to the sound as it dies to nothing. When is the exact moment between resonance, and silence? When I'm behind the lens, framing a shot, I'm caught in that moment.



One of the joys of photography is that, while yes, there are plenty of mistakes you can make, and techniques you can use, there is no exact 'right' way to do things. Digital photography and digital editing software completely frees one of the concern with wasting expensive film. You can shoot whatever you see that you like, delete it if it didn't work, and go on. You are free to experiment wildly and at random. These next few shots are examples of testing the parameters a bit.

This 'Certain Death' sign is out on one of my favourite cyclocross routes thru the rez. The canal catwalk goes across a small, narrow, rickety bridge with a couple of good ledges on and off, and a skinny bar-width squeeze past a tank on the east end. The local cycling cognoscenti refer to the assemblage as 'Certain Death', naturally. If I'm having a particularly good mojo day, I can ride it in both directions.

A topic of recent debate is: should you shoot full colour, then manipulate in Photoshop, or use the camera software to take the shot as a fully evolved B&W or sepiatone?

After discussing this with several pro photogs I know, I've reached my conclusion: I prefer to shoot full colour, have all the information in the raw file, and use Photoshop to achieve what I'm looking for. It was pointed out that you can always throw information out, but you can't bring it back if it's not there to begin with.

I prefer the control and adjustability of doing these as duotones in Photoshop. I like these darker, chocolatey 'ferrotype' sorts of results I get from doing this, as opposed to the rusty oranges of the sepia mode in most cameras.


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The 2 versions here are good examples of a shot that I thought might translate well into a duotone, but the end result looks better in full colour. I thought the duotone might bring up the highlights in the silvery backlit grass. However, running a fairly straightforward 'high pass filter' in Photoshop, achieves better results in the colour file.



This shot illustrates why I really want a DSLR. It's very difficult to shoot exactly what the human eye sees, particularly in failing light such as this with a bright sky as backdrop. However, with manual control of exposure / aperture, I feel I could have gotten this shot to be much less murky and the 'pasture sentinels' (large solitary cottonwoods) would have come up in better detail.

Tuesday was freezing cold, howling wind and I was bundled up like the Michelin Man. I had a hard time taking some of these shots, because the wind was blowing so hard that it was blowing ME around... between my (normally) shaky hands, shivering in eighteen degrees windchill, and getting buffeted by huge gusts, it made for interesting times. Shooting with gloves on is a complete non-starter, especially with a fiddly little compact digicam. Shooting with gloves off, is bloody painful in that sort of cold.

Last but not least, the sunset shot I posted on Wednesday, with an explanation, and a modified version that I photoshopped.


This shot broke a lot of rules, and still turned out pretty neat. Shooting straight into the sun, isn't a very brilliant idea, but with an LCD viewfinder, you can get away with it without sacrificing your eyesight. For this shot, I really wanted the details of the feathery, backlit grass. The challenge was that shooting straight into the vivid setting sun, blew out everything to the point where all you could see was faint mountain shadows. I really needed some sort of polarising filter, and with a fixed lens point-and-shoot, that's not going to happen very easily.

Lens flare is a simple by-product of shooting directly towards a bright light, i.e. the sun, sometimes exacerbated by a dirty lens (I'm not so good about checking that stuff). It can be an asset or a flaw, depending on the placement and what details of the composition are obscured by the flare.

Pro photographers often use filters to provide clarity or colour cast to a shot. Black and white film is often shot using a red filter to sharpen detail.

Whilst trying to solve how to get this shot, I decided to experiment with holding my Rudy Project sunglasses in front of the lens. I had the Racing Red lenses installed, and the tricky part was finding a spot on the sunglass lenses that was free of scratches, smear and dirt clods. As you can see the results were pretty cool.

The shot could technically be much, much cleaner. A tripod, or even monopod, is really essential for most landscape photography to capture clean details. The depth of field and focal point are mediocre, but that's a hallmark of fully-auto point-and-shoot convenience. The midtones are underexposed, the composition isn't what it could be, and the horizon could be straighter. But the dual lens flare is nifty, and the strong rose colour cast provided by the sunglasses, makes for an interesting photo.

Here's another version, that's been run through Photoshop and had the strong red colour cast removed, so that it simply looks as if I used a polarising filter.


The key to photography, for me, personally, is that every so often it gives me the power to promote the mundane into the transcendent.

Cheers,

LFR

teaser trailer...

it's so late, it's early, but here's a little something to whet your appetite for the coming attraction. I shot some really nice pictures Tuesday afternoon.

Have fun figuring out this shot. This picture is completely, totally unretouched. The only Photoshop I did, was to crop it, and that is God's honest truth. I also probably broke every rule available in taking it. Yea, yea I know, I've got a lens flare fetish, just shoot me now... and o, by the way... what the heck is UP with that wild lens flare, eh?

You tell me. I'll pony up the secret in a later update, if I'm feeling generous. Right now I'm off to bed and dreaming with Dido's hauntingly sweet melody floating 'round my brain:

My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why
I got out of bed at all
The morning rain clouds up my window
and I can't see at all
And even if I could it'd all be grey,
but your picture on my wall
It reminds me that it's not so bad, it's not so bad...

I drank too much last night, got bills to pay,
my head just feels in pain
I missed the bus and there'll be hell today,
I'm late for work again
And even if I'm there, they'd all imply
that I might not last the day

And then you call me and it's not so bad, it's not so bad...

and I want to thank you for giving me the best day of my life
Oh just to be with you is having the best day of my life

Thank You,

LFR

fun with Photoshop

Greetings all, welcome to Nerdz 'R' Us. It's snowing tonight in Boulderland, there's single estate Darjeeling in the Chatsford infuser, and WinAMP Shoutcast is serving up a voluptuous combo of Elvis, Stone Roses, Glenn Miller, and Black Flag. Puts me in a downright amicable kinda mood, ya know?

These are some of my favorite shots, that also happen to translate well to duotone manipulation. My deepest apologies to this guy for basically baldface ripoffs of his ideas, but anyone who knows anything about this whole venture, knows that's where I get most of my inspiration, insight, information, and the kick in the prat to try photography in the first place. Hell he's the one who bought me the Stylus 500 that I use for all these shots, it's an amazing camera, from an amazing dude.

I'll let youall decide if this is art, or crap, or just pathetic slavish copycatting. I'll load the original RGB file, then the duotone. In some cases, I've done a little tweaking with filters. Decide which you prefer, and enjoy.

First, the full color RGB of some aspens I shot up in Maroon Bells Wilderness back in mid-October:


Now, a duotone of the same shot. Cropped, levels adjusted, with a very low opacity film grain added to give it a slightly antiqued look:

Now a nice shot of the bridge from the 'Playing Hooky' post, RGB:

And the duotone. Little bit more manipulation with this one, did a bit of filtering, and added some dust/scratches. This bridge has tons of potential, I can't wait to ride the singlespeed out there with new fallen snow on... by then I should have a DSLR camera to really get nerdly with.

A sweet shot of the Indian Peaks after an early season snow, with late summer greenery in the foreground - you'll notice the original needs a bit of work straightening a not-so-level horizon:

Same shot, straightened, cropped and duotoned. The truly savvy might notice that I don't always use the same Pantone brown for these duotone shots, or even the same levels. These aren't true sepia shots anyway; they're channel manipulations in a duotone mode, using various Pantone browns as the secondary channel. True sepia is a much warmer orangey tone, these are more along the feel of... eh old silver gel shots, tintypes or something along that line. Most digicam software offers the possibility to do sepias automatically. I happen to enjoy fiddling with them manually in Photoshop (I use version 7, call me old-skool, cos I am). The aspens looked better with more black levels in the midtones, the bridge looked better with less, and so on it goes.

Last but not least, just a kickin shot of some teazle, with the Indian Peaks as backdrop. Teazle makes fun dried arrangements, sticks in yer sox, and scrapes the merry hell out of your shins when you fly thru it on open space singletrack with the 'crossie or MTB.

And now the duotone. I personally think this one came out best of all. I don't know why, perhaps it's just the proportions. I really like this shot. Feel free to tell me what you think.

As we fade to black on this snowy, chill November eve, let the dulcet gospel tones of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush crooning 'Don't Give Up' envelop you in a warm, wistful lullaby.

'Night all

LFR

Not So Swift

Arrrrrgh DAMMIT!!! I had a nearly full digicard of shots from today's Swift Ride ...

and my dumb arse lost bloody close to the entire thing - fortunately I was able to salvage some lovely shots from downtown.

You know how you tell yourself 'I should...' then you don't and pay the price? Well yea. I should have formatted my SD card before I went out on the ride this AM. But I didn't. And somehow the files on there got corrupted. Thank Dog for Imaging, I was able to open some of the shots with that and save them as readable files.

Anyway. Dammit dammit dammit... I had a bunch of awesome shots of the Swift guys out on a wicked cool dirt road ride. Nice high contrast shots that would have looked killer with some fun effects. Oh well, there will be plenty more rides. I ride with these guys because they are safe, sane and structured.

Today is one of those transitional weather days. Yesterday was windier than a Senate filibuster, but plenty warm. Today was mostly calm, but colder than a witch's tit. Tomorrow is forecast to snow, and it looked and felt that way, all day. Brooding skies above the Divide, hazy ineffectual sun, and a nasty thin northeast wind that cuts right thru to the bone. The above was the only shot that survived from the ride. This poor lad was both underdressed and underrepresented in the bodyfat quotient, so he was skipping pulls all day in a futile attempt to stay warm. Which is just as well, cos sitting on this sort of wheel is like trying to draft a soda straw.

I played around shooting some nice pictures of the fall foliage near the library.


Roses in mid-November? Yep, we got 'em.

As well as some pretty nice autumn colour still hanging on. Enjoy these shots of the late blooming roses in Boulder Creek Park, right off Broadway by the ampitheatre.

Cut me some slack - I was shivering, using super macro mode, in failing light, without a tripod. I KNOW this one is not in focus. I'm learning... slowly.


This one worked nicely with some very minimal effects work in PS. Try and guess what filters I used.

That's all for tonite.

Cheers,

LFR