Lance and the Tour Down Under

Those of you in Adelaide will be well aware of what's happening at the moment, and let's face it, you've probably had just about enough Lance-mania for the decade, but those overseas might be impressed to learn that Adelaide is currently hosting the Tour Down Under which features none other than global sporting icon Lance Armstrong.

Yesterday saw the lead up event to the tour proper, a 50km street race around the CBD of Adelaide, not dissimilar to the track the Formula 1 cars took 25 years ago (wow, was 1985 really that long ago??). This street race didn't count for the actual tour, I understand there was some cash up for grabs so the cyclists were slugging it out for that as well as to have a final warm up. I didn't expect Lance to really try too hard in this event, I mean, the guy turned up in his private jet last week so he's not exactly desperate for the cash, so I was thrilled to see he was part of a break away pack of 4 of 5 riders when I arrived which made taking his photo a whole lot easier (I was running a little late after some cricket in the nets ran a little over time - I love this country!).

Without further ado I present Lance and the Tour Down Under.















For the photographers out there I changed the focus setting to AI Servo to accommodate rapid fire shots which remain in focus (I have it set to 1 shot for pretty much everything else I shoot besides sports). I also set my camera to high speed burst mode (6 frames per second on the 40D, 3.9 on the 5D2 I think) and basically fired off a lot of shots when the guys rode past. In fast moving sports like cycling, actually, in pretty much any sport, it's very much a game of hit and miss, you need to do everything right in terms of framing and focusing and exposure, but beyond that it's largely a game of luck, the more you shoot the more chance you have of getting a killer shot. I was at the cycling for about 40 minutes yesterday, I took 360 photos, 90 of which I've kept. OF those 90 there are around 25 which I'd consider decent shots, the best of which you've just seen. It took me 60-90 minutes to go through all the photos, delete the shots I don't want and edit the photos I plan to keep.