Ice Racing

Another instance of extreme procrastination on my part.  My friend Paul (on the #29 bike) has been my friend.... basically since birth.  He used to ride his dirt bike around our neighborhood when we were kids.  He tried to get me into it, but somehow I resisted motorcycles till my 20's.  Fortunately I also suffered way less extreme injuries than he has!  He had asked me a few times if I wanted to come out and shoot one of their friendly ice racing sessions out in the country.  Finally this year I went and brought along my friend Andrew...also a big motorcycle guy. 

While I completely expected 95% failure of these shots after realizing my tiny little flashes counldnt keep up, I was surprised to find that most of them were actually better than I thought.  The problem (not to get technical) was that the max sync speed of these flashes was about 250th of a second, and to realy freeze the motion of the bikes I needed more like 500th of a second.  We quickly realized this and changed our angle to be shooting more head-on, rather than having them bikes slide passed.

I developed these pictures pretty dark.  The almost look as if they were shot at night.  The snow flakes hanging in the air, caught by the flashes, look like stars.  In actuality it was about 1pm, overcast, and very bright due to all the light bouncing off the snow.

In the end I ended up with some shots I was quite happy with, and Im sad that I sat on them for so long without even looking at them.  The lesson is always check your shots... you never know when you'll be sitting on something good!