Be Your Parachute
Back Wheel - 7.9mm at f/2.8, ISO 400, Shutter speed 1/50 sec
If you read my recent blog post about Seal's M9 contest, and you plan to enter, you'll probably know that there isn't long left to get your entries in. The last day to submit your entry is 5th February 2011. If you enjoy processing your digital negatives then you probably don't want to leave the shooting to the last minute.
It's a month long contest, but I'm going to be out of action from Monday so I have had just 2 weeks to a) convince myself that making the effort was worth it, even if it's going to suck when I lose (this is tied in to my "What am I going to do today?" question) and b) find something to actually shoot that will form a credible entry. It's a 2 shot narrative contest so it's about telling a story with 2 photographs presented in chronological order. I've always been fascinated by time but this contest initially left me thinking that time will be my undoing. I won't find an opportunity within the month, or be able to get out and shoot it. Then your entry needs to clearly illustrate a chronology, moving forward.
Shining Star - 5.1mm at f/2, ISO 400, Shutter speed 1/60 sec
I had already pencilled in attending The London Bike Show at the ExCeL Centre in London, simply because I started spending more time on my mountain bike on the weekends, and enjoy drooling over technology that's new and unaffordable. It's one thing to see photos in a magazine, but when you can actually trip over something and break it, well it's special. Especially when the lower priced bikes are just over £3000.
The show was actually a lot smaller than I expected, well the bike area at least. It was part of an outdoor show. It was much smaller than the Cycle Show at Earls Court towards the end of last year, and only 2 stands interested me this time. Cervelo and Pinarello. Kick-ass triathlon bikes at a price you can't afford. It's weird to pick up the front end of a bike when it weighs less than the tub of margarine you have in your fridge. It feels like it's much happier being off the ground.
Off the ground is what I was looking forward to. The Clan, a stunt bike team from Scotland were performing a 15 minute show when I arrived and it seemed like anyone who planned to see them wanted to catch them at their first show. They gave 3 through the day, and I spent a good hour at the barrier waiting for show 2 to start so I could get some shots to hopefully enter into Seal's M9 contest.
It was a challenge to shoot the action because the Leica D-Lux 4 isn't well suited to low light situations, and this was a big indoor exhibition centre with the lighting well and truly up in the rafters. If you go above an ISO of 400 you start to get a bit of noise from the D-Lux 4. I had to settle for some noise at times and experimented throughout the show just to keep my options open during post processing. Grain is very cool, but sometimes it's great to see minute detail too.
Front Wheel - 9.3mm at f/2.8, ISO 400, Shutter speed 1/50 sec
I've long since (last weekend) processed 2 images from the day and submitted them as my entry. I may have made a mistake in submitting too early, but never mind. I quite like one of the shots in this post more than the action shot I entered, but there are well over 100 entries already, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it! You aren't allowed to submit a description of your narrative entry, so lets hope the judges don't read this and feel a bit cheated.
Dan Air - 5.1mm at f/2, ISO 400, Shutter speed 1/50 sec
There is only 1 Silver Efex Pro preset below for these images because they were all processed with the same preset give or take a few adjustments for lighting. You can see more photos from the London Bike Show and grab more presets in my previous blog post titled "Back On Earth".
