I had a blast shooting the Summer Showdown mountain bike race at Bear Creek this weekend. Not only were the riders doing a great job on a tough course, but I was really hitting my stride with Strobist sports lighting. It’s been a nice evolution from basic motion freeze with a manual flash at the Rally in the Valley, to ETTL flash and some motion effects at On the Rocks, to off-camera flash with gels, motion, and multiple positions at Bear Creek.
Firing off rapid action shots with a telephoto lens from the back of a boat with the wind blowing past could really convince me to focus more on sports photography! The 70-200 on a small sensor is just right for water sports, and with bright sunlight reflecting off the water I was able to shoot ISO 100 at 1/500 most of the time and not mind the fact that it’s only a F4 lens without stabilization. Of course, the L-series sharpness and solid build were certainly noticeable.
A polarizer definitely cut the glare, and the hood doubled as a good splash guard. Resting a slightly loose tripod ring in my palm also made it easy to switch from horizontal to vertical. Being out on the boat for a few hours also gave me a change to not only get crisp freeze-frames, but to experiment with some other angles, compositions, and motion blur effects. The 70mm end of the zoom also yielded some nice portraits.
There were only three problems: my back got a bit contorted following the action for hours, my hand did finally cramp up on the smaller grip of the Rebel XTi, and I need to bring my trunks so I can try some wakeboarding!
At least according to CDC research:
More people are hurt snowboarding than any other outdoor activity, accounting for a quarter of emergency room visits, according to the first national study to estimate recreational injuries. Nearly 26 percent of the injures were from snowboarding followed by sledding (11 percent); hiking (6 percent); mountain biking, personal watercraft, water skiing or tubing (4 percent); fishing (3 percent) and swimming (2 percent).
I’ve taken plenty of lumps biking and boarding, but the worst I’ve racked up was a few stitches on the bike. As for broken bones, my only fracture was a collarbone in a game of flag football 
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