Broome Tioga Round #7 2013-14 Winter Series

There was kind of a light turnout for the races today that, actually, wasn't unexpected.  GNCC's series kicks off this weekend in Florida and NEOC's series is also underway in Jersey.  Facebook chatter from the past week had indications that a number of locals were headed to one or the other and that's pretty much how it played out.  There was still some good racing to be had by those who did show up to play though!  :)

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For me, today became sort of an experimental day.  First time using my new 24-85mm lens that I picked up in place of the 24-70 that I had killed.  I picked it up as a factory refurb - $400.  ( that's chump change for camera stuff ).  I loved that 24-70 - that thing was absolutely killer and a beautifully crafted piece of equipment but ....  I had to kick the can around some and really evaluate it - what do I use it for (mostly)? Shooting around f4 - f7'ish at the races grabbing wide angle shots . . .  I really didn't use it wide open at 2.8 a whole lot for that really nice blown out of focus background.  I do that quite a bit with my other lens - the 70-200 2.8 - not so much with the wide angle though.  $1800 vs $400.  $400 wins for what I'm using it for.  {shrug shoulders}

So the new lens got mud splattered and dirty -- it's "broken in" now and I think I managed to get a couple of keepers with it.  ( none going into this post - haven't really looked at those ones yet )

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I also toyed around with an idea that I have seen before from an online class that I took where you throttle the white balance in camera down to give everything a "blue'ish" tone (make it cool), and then offset the cool blue tones by using orange (warming) gels on the flashes against your targets as they come into shooting range.  Initially I took the white balance down a bit to far - around 3200k or so - and indeed everything wound up being VERY blue!  I wound up running around 4800k or so which didn't seem to bad.  The shots in this post were done using this setup.

I was also trying to play with  / work on my composition - ie; get shots with more than just a singular rider in them.  Those can be, and are nice but, it becomes a photo of a racer (as in singular) on a bike or quad.  Is there a race happening or is it just some person on a machine?  I want to learn how to better have my photo's tell a story... does that make sense?

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Anyway -- I have a number of images to go through so that I can get the keepers post up to the galleries.

More later....

-=- jd -=-

Season Ending Race @SDR = Good Racing!!

Square Deal Riders 2013-14 Winter Series came to a conclusion today with round #7 getting underway on schedule and with a good turnout of competitors.  A high percentage of the riders were the usual crowd but there was one notable addition - none other than Ben "Batman" Bouwens himself showed up - and he was there to race.

Click the photo's below to view them larger -- more to come that will be getting posted up to the galleries over the next day or so.   Enjoy!

SDR Round #7 2013-14 Winter Series

Ben Bouwens showed up and won the expert class race.  Scottie Rich gave him a run for his money though and certainly didn't make it an easy one for The Bat.

SDR Round #7 2013-14 Winter Series

Scottie Rich has been has been a dominant competitor at the years winter series.  Warm weather and good racing conditions lured out none other than The Bat - Ben Bouwens.  Those two put on a hell of a show and lap after lap they had a really good race going.  Bowens got him in the end.

SDR Round #7 2013-14 Winter Series

"The Kid" Marcus Scutt was in the running early on battling it out with both Bouwens and Rich.  He tangled with lappers midway through and lost touch with the two front runners.

SDR Round #7 2013-14 Winter Series

SDR Round #7 2013-14 Winter Series

SDR Round #7 2013-14 Winter Series

Broome Tioga - Round #2 2013-14 Winter Series

....  so I had anticipated on going to the races and shooting them for the better part of the day today.  I did go and I did shoot.  For a while.  I just wasn't "feeling it".  Shooting just felt kind of repetitious . . . I don't know...   Weather wasn't bad.  It was a bit on the cool side but when the sun was out it was very tolerable - and the sun was out quite a bit.  I hung around for a couple of hours but took off around 12:30 - 1:00pm... I went home and grabbed my dogs, had them jump into the back of the car and off we went to go for a good run.  {shrug shoulders}

Anyway - some grabs from the (brief) period of time that I was up there ...  I'll have these and the rest of the keepers posted up to the galleries in a day or so.  I think I'm in my usual winter "funk" where I just don't feel like shooting, or doing much of anything for that matter.  Hmmmmmm . . . .  March can't get here soon enough - that's "the last corner" of the yearly lap around the calendar.  We come out of that corner and then ease onto the gas going into the home stretch - Springtime and then Summer!

SDR's 2013-14 Winter Series Begins

From Motorsport Racing

The 2013-14 winter mud & snow scrambles race series at the Square Deal Riders (Belden Hill as it is apparently more commonly known to old timers... ) kicked off today under generally decent weather temperature-wise.  It was an "ugly" day with heavily overcast skies, but not terribly cold.  The race had an overall small'ish turnout but there were still probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 or so competitors that showed up to get in some racing.  It is hunting season and we are just coming off of the Thanksgiving holiday...  these could be contributing factors to the turnout.

From Motorsport Racing

In any case - the racing was pretty good, and I was out there catching some of it with my "throw back" camera kit.  I don't know why but I decided to "go old school" and just brought a very simple kit with me today.  I used my older D300 body and a little fixed focal length 24mm lens.  I also decided that I was going to use my old lighting kit that consists of my old SB28's and Paul Buff Cybersyncs.  No "fancy schmancy" TTL SB-600's and pocket wizards today.  As it turned out - I shot the better part of the day not using the flashes at all.  ( I was lazy and didn't feel like setting up the flashes ....  )  I did eventually pull them out later in the day though as the already gloomy skies began to get even gloomier and light was beginning to taper off.  I'd already decided that I was going to be restricting myself to a max 1/320th of a second shutter speed (manual flashes - no high speed sync / TTL voodoo) so I also shot in shutter priority some today too.  Basically I spent the day playing...    I tossed quite a few shots -- 1/250th and below is really not quite fast enough (without any flash) to score a good number of keepers...  that old D300 just doesn't grab focus nearly as fast as the D700 does either.  But -- thats ok -- I still managed to pull of some keepers and they'll be going up to the galleries in a day or so.

Anyway - SDR Round 1 is down, next Saturday the 7th is Round 2 of Broome Tioga's winter series.

More later...