I went to take some shots of another cycling race that my brother and the team he rides for was in on Thursday. The weather wasn’t the most ideal for what I was looking for, but I feel I made due with what I had… overcast, slow shutter speeds and experimenting with my flash to get any sort of shadow or depth.

It’s rather difficult to shoot fast moving objects on an overcast day surrounded by trees. I walked the course during the 5:30pm race to get a feel for what lines the riders were taking and where I should best position myself for my brother’s race. I found one stretch that offered a decent amount of light, a pleasant background - away from ugly sign posts - and where the riders came very close to the curb that I would be standing at.

The first few test shots proved to be mediocre at best. They were flat and boring due to the aforementioned lighting conditions. So I decided to experiment a little bit with my flash (Nikon SB-800). I was already shooting at a 30th of a second, forced to only take pan and blur shots; I figured it wouldn’t hurt to break a few rules and start popping my flash. This idea brought me some fairly interesting and great looking shots and hopefully I didn’t annoy any of the riders with the flash.

You can view the images on my Flickr page along with the rest of my photography…