Snowdonia Enduro Photo Assignment

Rider 50

As part of my ‘getting back into photography’ effort I’ve been meaning to photograph a mountain biking event for a while now. I quite like the idea of having a particular ‘assignment’ rather than just wandering around on a photo-walk and hopefully all of the participants in such an event will want to see photos of themselves.

However, I’m normally taking part in such events so don’t have time to photograph them, but as I’ve been side-lined for a while I thought this would be the ideal opportunity to give it a go. I used to do lots of photography back in the days of film, but have only recently got back into it with the purchase of a digital SLR. I haven’t gone mad and don’t have loads of expensive kit, so the plan was to attend the Snowdonia Enduro in North Wales armed with my camera kit, find a few suitable spots and sit there and try to capture photos of as many of the participants as possible. I was planning on maybe even selling some of them if they were good enough, but more on that later.

For those gear-heads amongst you I was using my Canon EOS450D along with two lenses, a 70-300mm and an 18-55mm. Probably not the perfect combination but its all I’ve got so it will have to do. I’ve also just bought a new tripod which I hoped would help me hold the longer lens steady (afterall this is North Wales so I wasn’t expecting great light levels!), and as I was expecting to be sat / standing in one spot for a while trying to capture as many participants as possible I thought that setting things up on a tripod would be a great help.

Rider 124

I got there early and checked out the lay of the land then walked up the first climb of the course and set myself up to capture people coming up the first climb. This was OK, I had the sun behind me and just catching the riders faces (when it was out), but I should probably have gone a bit further up the hill so that the riders were strung out a little more. I only used the longer lens as I wanted to get nice shots of the riders themselves. Next stop was the top of the muddy, slimy descent where I took quite a few shots from a nice vantage point where the riders were framed beautifully by heather in the foreground and the trees in the background.. Making sure I was in a position where people weren’t going too fast was important here.

I then settled down in a few places at the bottom of hill and took yet more shots, by now mainly of the people doing the longer 48km option. I was trying to get some of them cornering to make them look a little more dynamic, but had problems with the background in these as there were often marshalls wandering around at these location and their bright yellow jackets in the background were distracting so I didn’t stay there long.

The tripod was indeed a good help and I was able to start messing around with a few settings to get the results I wanted. Focusing on the moving riders and capturing a nice sharp image was the main problem, and of course getting people faces exposed properly as they are often obscured by the helmets.

It all went well and I had a good day wandering around the hills playing with my camera. I would rather have been riding of course, but being behind the camera wasn’t a bad place to be and I saw a few familiar faces as they cycled past.

Back at home and I processed the photos and was fairly pleased with the results so I’ve watermarked them, resized them and uploaded them here to create a Snowdonia Enduro Photo Album. Overall it was a good day out and fairly successful. I learnt a few things and will probably give it a go at another event soon. Practice makes perfect as my grandad would have said! We’ll see what the competitors think of the photos first.

My Snowdonia Enduro Photos are now out ready for all to see.

Here are a few as a taster, but the link above takes you to the whole album. They are ordered and titled by rider number so you should be able to find yourself fairly easily. Hope you all had a good time, it looked like a good event, and I only wish I could have been riding rather than taking photographs, but I was under doctors orders!

Feel free to use the images on your personal blogs or for non-commercial purposes, but please keep the copyright watermark in place. You can buy a full size, non-watermarked image from the Snowdonia Enduro Photo Album.

Also, let me know what you thought of the event and the photo by posting a comment here.

I’ve set myself a little photo assignment for the weekend and decided to treat myself to a tripod as I’ve been meaning to get one for a while and it will come in handy for this assignment.

So, which is the best tripod? Well the whole point of a tripod is to hold the camera still to minimise camera shake, especially with bigger lenses or in low light. So the best tripod is sturdy, strong and stable. Trouble is the most stable, sturdy tripod would be one that weighed a tonne. It would hold the camera perfectly still whatever you or nature threw at it. It wouldn’t be too practical though as you’d never be able to move it!

So, as with all things there is always a compromise and with tripods that compromise is between stability and weight. In general terms the heavier the tripod the more stable it will be, but the less portable it becomes. Of course, high end, expensive tripods made from exotic materials can help to a certain extent here, but there’s no getting away from the fact that heavy is stable, light isn’t whatever the materials it is made from. I decided that the cheaper models were a false economy as they simply wouldn’t hold an SLR with a big lens steady enough so just wouldn’t be worth using. The most expensive models, and as with all things photographic they can get very expensive, would be much more stable but they do tend to get a bit bulky. I therefore decided to go for a mid range model that is light enough to carry up a hill but will hopefully still hold the camera still as long as it isn’t blowing an absolute hoolie.

The Camlink pro series tripod seemed to fit the bill and was good value for money, so I bought one yesterday and will be trying it out at the weekend. I’ve played around with it and it has all the necessary features that you’d expect from a decent tripod. It seems pretty stable, is highly adjustable and is just about the right weight. It evens comes with its own little carrying bag which should help with lugging it up the hills.

My hands aren’t quite as steady as they used to be so hopefully it will help hold the camera still whatever the photographic situation and should help me play around with some low light and night shots. If I get any decent result I shall post them here.

Following up from my earlier post about planting palm trees in Ynyslas, I’ve noticed today that you can even buy them via Amazon! No need to even leave your house, just order them online and have them delivered to your door.

Definitely no excuses now!

Amazing what you can buy online these days.. I don’t know how good they are though, but at that price I might just give it a go, along with a few other items for the garden. Beats going all the way from the Isle of Man to get them!!!

Time for a rant….

First of all, dog owners that don’t clean up after their dogs, it’s disgusting, especially in public places and around here on the beach. There are kids playing in the dunes, digging in the sand and generally crawling around on the beach. The last thing they want to come across is a big pile of dog poo! Same for me, the little area of grass that I use to rig up on when going windsurfing at the top of the dunes is always covered in dog poo. It’s not nice at all!… Clear up after your dogs!

Even worse though are those idiot dog owners who do take some bags with them, pick up the poo and then leave the bags complete with poo in a nice little pile on the beach somewhere.. What’s the point of that? I know what, rather than just leaving dog poo on the beach I’ll put it in a nice plastic, non-biodegradable bag so that it hangs around on the beach for 10 times as long.. Very clever!

Stop it, stop it, stop it!

Maybe its time to start reporting people. Who’s with me on this?

MTB Wales

Following my recent flu and health problems, I’m not quite up to any Mountain Bike racing at the moment, but I’ve been enjoying my photography and quite fancy having a go at taking photos of a MTB event sometime soon. I guess now is the perfect opportunity as I can’t ride myself so I could immerse myself in an event and camp out in the woods taking photos.

There’s an event next weekend at Betws y Coed (The Snowdonia Enduro 2009) and I don’t think I have anything planned, so if nothing crops up and the weather looks OK I may well pop up and take some photos.

If I do go and manage to get any decent photos I’ll post them here, so if you’re entered then don’t forget to smile!

I came across a weblog written by another local resident the other day. I can’t remember how it came to my attention, probably through a ‘Google Alert’ in my inbox, but it was well written with lots of local interest so I had a look through it and then to my surprise found a photo of myself on it.

I don’t get too many photos of me windsurfing so it was good to see it, and good to see that my windsurfing had obviously impressed someone, although I doubt that I was doing 40 mph! Check it out, the weblog entry is ‘Like a Bat out of Hell‘.

Its good to see someone else from Borth with a lively blog too. I would have said ‘it’s a small world’ after seeing myself mentioned on his blog, but I guess anyone who has ever been to Borth already knows that!

Coryline Australis

I’m on a mission to turn the main road through Ynyslas into an avenue of palm trees!

OK, it’ll probably never happen but I think it would look nice. One of the things I like about the Isle of Man is the number of palm trees there. More accurately they are actually Cordyline Australis which have a number of common names including Manx Palm or Cabbage Palm and they are everywhere on the Isle of Man, giving it a somewhat tropical look!

As you arrive on the island by plane, the area around the airport is full of pretty impressive specimens and if you arrive by boat it isn’t long before you see some.

They grow well here in West Wales too and withstand the sandy soil, winds and sea spray that all too commonly destroy most plants. There are already quite a few in Ynyslas but I think it would look nice if there were more. We have one that is growing well in our back garden but I’m now on a mission to get more of them growing, especially along the road. I’ve planted one in the front garden right by the fence and a couple more will join that soon. Lets just hope they stand up to the winds as gardening in a windy area is always difficult.

I’m even giving a few away as presents to people (usually to say thanks for feeding the cat whilst we’ve been away), hopefully they’ll plant them in their gardens too and before you know it, Ynyslas will take on a tropical look!

So, if you live in Ynyslas, plant one in your front garden, they aren’t expensive to buy, they grow well, are easy to look after and will brighten up your life!

I haven’t been out of the house for a week so as it was such a lovely day I just had to go for a nice easy walk in the dunes. I had Morgan with me so it was more of a tiny little stroll really, but I still managed to take a few photos.

I hope you like them

The weather has been a little mad lately. Yesterday we had monsoon conditions in the morning with around 12mm of rain in an hour or so, but by the afternoon it was glorious sunshine and I even fell asleep in the hammock out in the garden! Perfect weather for the garden to grow though, although there was a bit of wind as usual which does its best to ruin any plants around here! When I say a bit of wind, it was gusting to just over 40 knots which is in fact quite a lot of wind!

Normally I’d be out on the water windsurfing but I’m still recovering from my recent chest infection etc. so I had to stay at home. I did manage to wander around the garden in the sunshine for a bit though and things do indeed seem to be growing well.

Somehow we have tomato plants all over the garden. I think they must have grown from seeds in the compost bin but they seem to be doing OK and some of them are even ripening. They are making parts of the garden look a little messy but I’m still trying to get things established so any growth is good as it provides shelter for other things. Talking of which, the Goji Berry bushes that we put in earlier in the year seem to be doing really well. They seem to cope well with the wind, we’ll just have to see how they fare with the winter.

I now have some plans for a nice big flower bed at the far end of the garden and some little seating areas.. Time to get to the garden centre and spend some money! Either that or make some seats out of flotsam and jetsam from the beach!