After last year, I knew the Mid-Atlantic Super Series at Bear Creek Mountain Resort wasn’t to be missed: lots of people come out for the final race on a tough course, and the resort serves up hot BBQ and cold beer on the deck afterward!
I got a second chance to catch some track racing at the velodrome in Trexlertown after rain postponed Friday night’s race to Saturday. Though we’d soon find out the rain wasn’t quite done yet:
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 
