Published by Bryan August 4th, 2008
in Events.
First you start at 7000 feet
So I’ve heard of Xterra triathlons before this past weekend but this was the first 
one I observed. I knew where the Snow Valley park was as it is local to me but I never envisioned people traversing it in this manner. In case you don’t know where it is, Snow Valley is located in the San Bernardino National Forest off Highway 18 at 7000 feet… and that’s the parking lot! From there it’s up the mountain at least 400 feet to the lake where the swim took place. Most triathlons I have covered place Transition 1 and Transition 2 at the same place. Not so with this one. T1 is at the lake so the athletes had to bike up to the lake before the race even started.
Hiking up to the lake
In order to cover the event I decided I would need to hike up to the lake as well. It was not too bad and myself and my amateurendurance.com friends got a ride in the back of a truck when we were about half way up. From there I observed the swim and then moved to get in position for the mountain biking.
Biking through the loose stuff
All I can say about the bike is “loose rocks and sand”. Mountain biking is my personal favorite sport and 
seeing these athletes perform was awesome. I saw a plethora of bikes with a huge selection of hard tails and some really nice dual suspension bikes. Some people were totally comfortable on their bikes, you could tell, and others just wanted to finish alive. I think about a third of the pack had taken a spill of some kind or another by the second time around. They had to do one and a half laps on the bike.
Then you have to run up that
What what what?! Yes, you have to run up that! Seriously the run course looked like it would be impossible to just ascend let alone run up. By this point more then a few people just want to finish. The crazy thing is the winner finished the 
run before some people even began their second lap of the bike. This event was a total adventure. I’d recommend it to the most adventurous among you and for everyone else you should spectate one because it is totally fun. Photographing was challenging with the perfect clear skies casting harsh shadows. I used my flash in the broad daylight and experimented a lot. You can see race coverage over at amateurendurance.com and check out more of our photos in the Gallery.
Published by Bryan July 27th, 2008
in Events.
This past weekend we went with the fine people at Amateur Endurance to the Solana Beach Triathlon/Duathlon in beautiful San Diego. We took lots of photos, we posted some in our gallery. For full race coverage check out Amateur Endurance.
Published by Jamie July 5th, 2008
in Events.
We hope everyone had a fun and safe 4th of July. This year we decided to go to Huntington Beach to check out their fireworks show. We got down there around 6pm and we were suprised to see how many people were down there. We had to park on a residential street over a mile away from the beach. The majority of the crowd watched the fireworks show from the beach but we decided to pay $10 each to watch them from the pier. It was definitely worth the cost, they were shooting them off at the end of the pier so they were right over our heads. Bryan got some really great slow shutter speed shots. Check them out here.
Oh yeah, we also got some amazing sunset shots. Aww…the sun setting over the Southern California coast, is there anything more beautiful?
Published by Jamie July 1st, 2008
in Events.
This past weekend (June 29th) was the San Diego International Triathlon. We have posted pictures of the event in our gallery.
Early One Morning
Well the first thing you have to face when covering a triathlon is getting up way too early in the morning. It is well worth it but when that alarm goes off you ask yourself just for a moment “What was I thinking”. So Jamie and I piled into Jay’s vehicle and went off towards the starting line and transition area. Jay is our friend who participated in the event along with hundreds of other triathletes. We arrived and Jay went off to prepare and warm up while Jamie took a spot along the bike route and I took a spot on the run course.
It’s Dark Early in the Morning
So guess what? It’s dark early in the morning before the sun comes up. This made shooting the swim pretty futile. That and the fact that even a 200mm lens was not enough reach. I later noticed that the light meter gets easily confused by water too. Either it was that or all the bright orange kayaks and yellow swim caps. Either way my swim photos were useless. 
Jamie got a good shot at the turn around point for the swim though.
“I hit 47 mph on the downhill!”
Jay told us he hit 47 mph on the downhill section of the bike part of the race. In case you don’t know, anything over about 30mph feels really fast on a bicycle. This is especially true on road bike with brakes about as wide as my pinky finger. Jamie got some great shots of the bike riders including this great panning shot.
Time to hit the pavement
Once the athletes transitioned from the bike they got into their running shoes to finish out the triathlon. I positioned myself so I could take photos of the runners along two points in their run without moving from my location. This worked well and I was able to get some great shots. The funny thing is runners can look awkward depending on where they are in their stride when you take the photo. This one came out pretty well. 
Lessons learned
Jamie and I learned a couple of lessons at this event. First is always bring more memory then you think you will need. The second is that sometimes setting the autofocus to use only one point makes sense. I got a lot of shots where the AF focused on the cones in the road or a reflective road sign or the sign for a hotel instead of the runner. The third is to check the histogram to make sure the meter isn’t confused.
“I’d do it again”
In the end it was a blast. We even took a pic of Jay, drove his car to the finish line, and took a pic of him again. We learned a lot and we will definitely want to photograph this event again.
For race coverage check out www.amateurendurance.com
Published by Bryan May 5th, 2008
in Events.
US Navy and Coast Guard
The Red Bull Air Races were held May 3rd and 4th, 2008 in San Diego California. We were able to attend on the 4th and take many great pictures. Before the races themselves started there were many side acts and flybys. San Diego is home to many Naval Ships and has a huge military presence. I’ve been to air shows before but none of those compared to this in terms of how close we were to the action and how slow the flybys were. In this photo you can see the heritage
flight formation where older aircraft fly side by side with the current generation fighter jets. It’s funny to think that the F-18 will soon be one of the old aircraft too. The first thing you notice here is that the other two planes are propeller driven. The F-18 can fly really slow. How slow? Well so slow you think it’s hovering when you are looking at it from the ground up. The pilot does this by flying at a high angle of attack. The F-18 has the ability to fly at an almost unlimited angle of attack. That means that the wings are pointed up in relation to the air stream and the movement of the aircraft. So why am I telling you all of this? Well of course because the pilot did
such a low-speed, high angle of attack flyby. In this photo you can see the pilot tipping the wing right after powering up from the low-speed flyby.
The demonstrations were not limited to fighter jets though. The Coast Guard demonstrated a hoist rescue as you can
see in this photo. These helicopters are huge and being underneath one is like being in a small hurricane. I found this out first hand as one flew right by the shore and then leaned left. Jamie’s hat flew about 50 feet.
And last but not least is the crazy maneuver of the Navy divers who hook themselves
onto a tether and get pulled out of the water by a seahawk while using no hands. All I have to say is that these guys are nuts! I also wonder how they get down from there. I guess I will never know. Now to the racing itself.
Smoke On!
When the planes prepare to enter the course the air control tells the pilot “smoke on” which tells them to turn on the smoke so the officials can see the flight line and to enter the course. The course is just over 3.5 miles long but it is contained in an area of about 1 square mile. 
These highly advanced aerobatic prop planes fly at or sometimes over 300 mph. This makes for a very exciting race. The course is defined by a series of air gates. These are conical towers made of a very thin nylon and inflated with air. If a plane collides with a gate it just bursts apart leaving the plane undamaged.
Here you can see what they call the “Quadro” where four air gates are used. The pilots fly through this group of gates twice in two different directions. 
Since it was so bright outside, shooting these planes was easy… except tracking them was hard. These things moved really, really fast!
Here is a photo of the winner. His name is Paul Bonhomme 
from Britain and he beat American Mike Mangold in the final by just over a second. See more great shots in the Gallery.
Published by Bryan May 5th, 2008
in Events.
A Noble Event
Every year one event brings together excitement and horses and fund raising for a good cause. All the proceeds from each years event goes to the American Cancer Society, the USC Norris Cancer Center, and the Roy and Patricia Disney Cancer Center. The Extravaganza is where the best acts and the most polished Spanish horse breeds are shown off. Photographing this event is challenging. This year we sat in the box seats to get a close look. The Equidome is lit inside but it isn’t bright enough for say ISO 100 film or that setting on a Digital camera. Jamie and I shot ISO 800 film and shot digitally in both 800 and 1600 modes. This was in an effort to keep the shutter speeds above 1/90th of a second.
All the Excitement
The event is very exciting all the way through. We saw trick riders who rode their horses while hanging off
the side of the saddle upside down or while standing on the saddle while using no hands. One of the two trick riders even swung in front of their horse to the other side and got back on. The crazy thing is the horses steer themselves when the riders are doing these tricks. So both horse and rider have to trust each other.
The other exciting thing to see is when the horses are taught to jump straight up in the air from a standstill. This is called a capriole. It’s not something you would see if you’ve been to a thousand horse shows but each year you can see it at the Fiesta. Shooting such an act is difficult as you can imagine. The photographer on the floor of the arena had a powerful strobe.
Being in the stands meant not being afforded that option. Therefore we had to rely on a high ISO and a quick response on the shutter. If our camera’s had any shutter lag once the shutter had been pressed we would miss the shot. That is the thing I love about our XT and the Canon A2E I was shooting film with. Both of these cameras have little to no shutter lag.
“Awww, how cute!”
Every year the Fiesta trots out the newborn foals with their mothers. This year one of them was only 5 days old! The reaction of course is unanimous. “Awww, how cute”, is what I hear from the whole audience. Taking this picture wasn’t hard at all. Any shot
would do but I think this shot on the right demonstrates the interaction between foal and mare especially well.
I could write on for days about all the wonderful acts you can see at this show. I can’t show them all here though so be sure to head over to the Gallery to check out all the photos. We put them under the Horses category.
Published by Jamie May 9th, 2007
in Events.
This past Saturday, May 5th, was the annual Fiesta of the Spanish Horse. This is an event that brings together some of the most beautiful horses in the world in one place, the LA Equestrian Center in Burbank, CA. This is quite a large place for horses and a wonderful place for a horse show. The show took place inside their large indoor arena, this was fine because there were so many people but created some problems when trying to take pictures. The show is packed full of some really cool stuff and is a really nice way to present this group of horses. The horses that perform in the show are all Spanish breeds including the Andalusian from Spain, the Paso Fino from Puerto Rico and the Peruvian Paso from Peru among others. The horses are asked to perform by either showing off their natural gaits, performing dressage or doing tricks which is very fun to watch, not to mention these horses are stunningly beautiful.
These horses are constantly in motion throughout the whole show which would require a faster shutter speed, more so because of the telephoto lens I was using requires a faster shutter when it is zoomed. Because the light was so low inside the indoor arena I had to shoot with a very high ISO, don’t get me wrong it was plenty to see the show with but not enough for the camera. The high ISO makes the sensor more sensitive to light, it also creates more noise on the image when the ISO gets higher. I chose to shoot in aperture priority and set it at 4, this is the most open my 70-200mm lens can get. Then I set it to ISO 800, my camera does go all the way up to ISO 1600 but I didn’t want my photos to be completely ruined by noise. We sat up in the general seating which is higher up from the arena and further away, my 70-200mm was perfect for this situation, it was almost like we had a front row seat without paying the extra hundred something dollars.
Even at a high ISO and a aperture set at 4 the shutter speed still could not go higher than 1/125 without underexposing. This shutter speed is not that fast for this situation so a lot of my images are not as crisp as I would have liked them to be. The photos also do have some noise, but with a little noise reduction software the pictures came out pretty good and I had a lot of fun taking them. This is a really great event that I would highly recommend to horse lovers and even non horse lovers, plus all proceeds go towards Cancer Research so next year head on over to the Fiesta!
Published by Bryan May 5th, 2007
in Events.
This past Sunday April 29th, 2007 Jamie, some friends, and I went to the Rim of the World Rally held this year in Lancaster, CA. The event itself was small for a Rally type event. It consisted of a single stage dirt course loop inside the fairgrounds and an autocross course setup in the parking lot with cones. The autocross course was open to the public and for a small fee anybody could take their car and set a time. The event was sponsored by Subaru so they dominated the selection of cars at the event. Still a Toyota Matrix and a Lotus Elise got good times on the autocross and the dirt rally course featured everything from a Ford Ranger to a VW Rabbit.
I shot exclusively with our 70-200mm lens. There were times when I wish I had a longer lens. Still this lens worked well outside. The temperature was high and the sun was bearing down on us. Shade was hard to find so we didn’t stay long. Still we captured some nice images.
Published by Jamie April 17th, 2007
in Events.
That’s right I’ve put up new horse photos in the gallery. Bryan and I recently went to a horse show and took lots of photos. For those of you who are not into horses, I’m sorry for overwhelming you with horse photos but I can’t help but be fascinated with these beautiful creatures so there will definitely be more horse pictures to come. I hope you all enjoy them!
Published by Jamie March 7th, 2007
in Events.
This past Sunday, March 4th to be exact, was the annual Acura L.A. Bike Tour which took place in downtown Los Angeles. The actual course is a little over 22 miles and begins in Exposition Park right next to the Coliseum and ends on Exposition Boulevard across the street from USC. Bryan participated in this year’s ride, he also participated in last years when the course was different. The actual ride begins at 5:50 in the morning, which means we had to wake up at 3:00 am to get there in time so Bryan could be towards the front of the pack. The pack by the way is quite large, about 18,000 cyclists ride in this particular tour, it is after all “America’s Favorite Ride.” It’s definitely not my favorite, only because it’s in the middle of “ghetto town USA” and driving in L.A. makes you crazy. Anyway besides that it’s quite fun to be apart of, and lots of fun to watch.
So after Bryan went off on his merry way to bike the streets of Los Angeles I walked toward the finish line on Exposition Boulevard. I decided to visit USC while I waited patiently for Bryan to return. USC has some beautiful architecture and is definitely a great photo spot. After about 50 minutes the first cyclist crossed the finish line, so I decided to position myself across the street to wait for Bryan. As I waited I took pictures of many cyclists, I had my camera set in shutter priority mode because I wanted to be able to catch the fast moving cyclists. The fastest shutter speed I could set it at to make sure the camera didn’t underexpose the image was 1/100, not a fast shutter speed but combined with the panning technique I was able to stop the motion pretty well. Obviously with a faster shutter speed I 
could have really frozen the action but panning really gave me the effect I was looking for.
After about an hour and a half Bryan crossed the finish line. Around that same time the other thousands of bikes were also finishing which made it impossible for me to cross the street, however I decided to risk my life and run across the street to celebrate with Bryan. Thi
s is a great bike ride for beginning to avid cyclists and is a great event to photograph, however if you’re looking for nicer scenery there are many other bike tours in the Southern California area that you should check out. Bryan will probably be participating in a few of those tours as well. We will continue to post more info and photos on any upcoming bike tours we participate in.
For more pictures from the Acura L.A. Bike Tour please visit the Gallery.
one I observed. I knew where the Snow Valley park was as it is local to me but I never envisioned people traversing it in this manner. In case you don’t know where it is, Snow Valley is located in the San Bernardino National Forest off Highway 18 at 7000 feet… and that’s the parking lot! From there it’s up the mountain at least 400 feet to the lake where the swim took place. Most triathlons I have covered place Transition 1 and Transition 2 at the same place. Not so with this one. T1 is at the lake so the athletes had to bike up to the lake before the race even started.
seeing these athletes perform was awesome. I saw a plethora of bikes with a huge selection of hard tails and some really nice dual suspension bikes. Some people were totally comfortable on their bikes, you could tell, and others just wanted to finish alive. I think about a third of the pack had taken a spill of some kind or another by the second time around. They had to do one and a half laps on the bike.
run before some people even began their second lap of the bike. This event was a total adventure. I’d recommend it to the most adventurous among you and for everyone else you should spectate one because it is totally fun. Photographing was challenging with the perfect clear skies casting harsh shadows. I used my flash in the broad daylight and experimented a lot. You can see race coverage over at amateurendurance.com and check out more of our photos in the Gallery.
