This annual Las Vegas cyclocross race is unusual in that the pro races take place after dark. This makes photographing the event an interesting challenge. I traveled out to the Interbike trade show with a very minimal gear kit, but I wanted to make sure to get some shots at the cross race that were unique. Of course I wanted to use off camera lighting to capture some dramatic images that differ from the throngs of on camera flash shots being captured by the hundreds of other photographers.

The above image has a similar lighting style to the photos from the US Pro Cycling Challenge in Colorado this summer. But instead of a high powered Alien Bee and HSS Hack, I was able to use Nikon SB900s and regular sync speeds since there wasn’t much power needed at all.

I also used a lower shutter speed to add a little motion blur to impart the sense of speed. In fact, as the evening progressed, I played with using a longer and longer shutter to add some motion blur to the images. I love the color and the motion the blur, as well as the water spray frozen in mid air.

I didn’t feel like taking part in the scrum of all the photographers looking for that quintessential finish line shot, so I camped out around the corner. Lars van der Haar takes the win.

Third loser Rob Peeters shows the agony of defeat … but I’m sure he’s not losing any sleep about this loss after his silver medal at the World Championships yesterday.

From a technical standpoint, I was using a Nikon D700, Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 VR2, AlienBee 1600 with a Vagabond Mini, and PocketWizard FlexTT5 MiniTT1, AC3 and AC9 components. I was able to pack all of this gear into a backpack and ride out to the course, which was essential since there was not close car access. There are two great things about these new PocketWizards. The first feature is that I’m able to capture very high shutter speeds while still using flash. Most of these shots are in the neighborhood of 1/1250 of a second, providing sharp, action stopping clarity. The second essential part of this setup, is that I have the ability to adjust the strobe power from the camera. The race was held under partly cloudy skies, and the sunlight was constantly changing from bright sun to shadow. It was extremely difficult to keep the exposures consistent, since every time the sun would change, I would have to make an adjustment. Fortunately, I was able to do it from the camera. I would have been able to take more consistent shots with constant ambient lighting conditions, but I’m certain that I will improve in my setting adjustments with practice. An unusual side effect of shooting over the sync speed, is that adjusting the shutter speed also affects your flash power. This made manual camera and flash power adjustments a bit more complicated than I’m used to.

As a final note, all this technology comes with another hefty price. I’ve been unable to get consistent firing with these units. It’s a real bummer when you’ve got one chance for the shot and the flash doesn’t go off. Insert unhappy face here. Nonetheless, the performance advantages and high power of this system keep me banging my head against the wall and keep trying to work out the bugs.

I’ve picked my top photos, based on lighting as well as importance of riders. This first photo is probably my top favorite, featuring this animal of a man called Jens Voigt. Simply a stunning photo and stunning expression. The sun was mostly behind the clouds which is giving him a soft rim light on his right arm and shoulder.

Next we have Colorado prodigy Danny Summerhill gritting his teeth and looking like he’s actually enjoying the pain.

I’ve never heard of Carlos Rodriguez, but I do like the feeling of this photo. Here the sun came out in full strength, so I cranked up the strobe to balance the sunlight, thereby giving the photo a bright commercial look.

I had to include this shot of Anders Lund since he’s being chased by some nutjob in a wig. Interesting blur on the left side from a spectator’s arm. I call that Art.

If this next shot was capture using merely natural light, we probably wouldn’t have been able to see the steely gaze of über-star Fränk Schleck from behind the visor of his time trial helmet.

I gotta give a shout out to Jeff Louder from Utah. The light in his eyes and the drool on his chin show that he’s deep in the pain cave on this ride. As the sun dipped behind the clouds but the flash power stayed high, the subject is illuminated strongly in front of an underexposed background.

Here’s the big shot of the big man Cadel Evans who was fresh off his first Tour de France win. Unfortunately Cadel rode on the far side of the road on the outside of the bend, which was farther away from the strobe than everyone else was riding. I guess when you are a superhero you don’t even have to take the shortest line.

In the above shot, do you see the yellow and green blob hovering about the team car? Yeah, well that is an Aussie cycling fan cheering on The Man!

Here we have the stage winner and eventual overall race winner Levi Leipheimer. This is where I have to shed a small tear, since I experienced a painful PocketWizard misfire. Decent shot, but to me it lacks the punch of some of the other shots without the auxiliary boost of light. I did very minimal retouching on these photos, but I did brighten Levi’s face in this shot since it was underexposed.

Things were getting crazy by the time Stage 2 winner, fan favorite, and penultimate rider George Hincapie hit the final stretch. I switched to a horizontal position to show more of the crowd jumping in front of me.

The final rider of the day was race leader and young American Tejay Van Garderen. Tejay put up a valiant fight but was denied the victory by the deep experience of veteran Levi Leipheimer. You’ll be hearing much more from Tejay in the decade to come. On a technical note, it’s pretty obvious where my strobe was placed!

Well I hope the photographers out there have enjoyed my technical details, and everyone else probably isn’t reading this and just looked at the pictures anyway. Another option with the PocketWizard Flex units, is that I could have shot using TTL flash metering. This may have made keeping up with the changing light a bit easier. But frankly, auto shooting scares me. Under normal portrait conditions I like to have complete control of my camera and flash so that I get exactly the results I’m looking for. However, if I get another chance to shoot in conditions like this, I just might see how these units are able to auto expose the riders.

There is a new biking game in the town of Boulder, and it’s called Valmont Bike Park. This is a public park where riders of all ages and abilities can come out and play and work on their skills. I’m an old school BMX kid from the 80′s, and I’ve loved jumping bicycles ever since I got my first BMX bike way too many decades ago. At first sight, the big kid jumps at the park are pretty intimidating. But the allure of flying though the air and acting and feeling like a 14 year old again are too much for me to resist. So I bought a dirt jump bike and have been hitting the park. I have a few friends with similar BMX backgrounds from the Dark Ages, and together it makes a pretty nice afternoon to head out to the jumps for some air time.

Bobbie Turner of 5280 Fotos is my main accomplice and a photographer as well. This past Sunday we headed out to the park for our first photo session. I brought my usual high powered strobe setup and parked it on the first wood jump on the XL dirt jump line. I really like the strobed look, so we setup shots at one jump and one jump only for this session. Thanks Bobbie for tripping the shutter on the photos in the second half of this set. I was using a PocketWizard Mini/Flex triggers, which allowed me to sync at 1/1000 of a second to freeze the action.

First up, a random rider with a nice flat tabletop. This is I move I really want to work on.

I love the edgy lighting in this shot. Generally I like cross/rim light, but it’s tricky at this spot to not have the strobes in the background.

Eli is up, looking cool sailing over the iconic Flatirons of Boulder.

Lots of sun flare when using the 14-24 lens. Without any clouds in the sky I like using the sun as a compositional element.

This is a cool shot showing the strobe setup and an overall view of the jump.

Making ridiculous faces is a great way to get featured on the blog.

Here’s a shot of me captured by Bobbie. I call this look Blue Aluminum. (Zoolander reference)

I’m loving the composition of this one.

Fun shot of a young BMX kid launching into the stratosphere.

We used to call this a “helicopter” back in the day.

Eli in yo face!

Lastly we have my current Facebook profile pic.

You can check out a full gallery of Valmont Bike Park photos on my Facebook Page. This is surely the first session in what is going to certainly be an ongoing evolution. At some point we’ll set up a shoot with some real pros pulling off amazing acrobatic moves. But in the meantime, there’s a group of old farts having a ton of fun acting like kids.

As I was driving through town, I started to get freaked out by the nasty smog cloud blowing over from Juarez! But luckily as I headed north out of the city and climbed up to the foot of the Franklin Mountains, the air cleared. I parked at the Tom Mays Unit of Franklin Mountains State Park. The winter air was in the mid 60s, a perfect temperature for mountain biking in the Chihuahuan Desert. I don’t even want to think about what it’s like to ride here in the summer! There is not a speck of shade anywhere to be found.

The trails are rocky and technical. There is only one steep long climb, but the ride is constantly up and down the whole way. There aren’t too many places to get going very fast before a corner or a gully or a pile of rocks causes you to trim your speed. Overall, it is a fun ride. I road the loop all the way out and back, and it was a solid three hours or so, not that I was really keeping track of the time.

I continued my trend of finding random treasures along the trail. Today I happened to notice two pills on the trail. I ate them, but I didn’t really feel any effects. I did get lonely on these trails after a while. Luckily my spirit animal came and kept me company for the middle portion of the ride. Who would have thought that the rare albino desert platypus was my spirit animal? I was really impressed in his technical riding abilities.

The main thing that I was struck by was the fact that every bit of plant matter (other than the grass) was covered in thorns and prepared to shred my skin to bits. It has been three weeks since the ride, and the scabs from all the scratched on my legs are finally gone. The desert seems to have the desire to take the trails back, and there is growth encroaching on the trails. Crashing is not an option. I pity the person who tries to learn how to mountain bike here, because the trails are definitely hard enough to knock down an intermediate rider! It is for sure true rugged western mountain bike riding.

I stopped in at Desert Sports for some trail info and to buy some Slime tubes. I was happy to find that they had 29er presta slime tubes for me! I didn’t have time for any flats from the innumerable thorns that I would find along the way. I was directed to the Lajitas Trail System, also called the Lajitas airport trails. It was only a couple miles from the shop, and right on the highway, so it sounded good to me.

The trails themselves were only moderately exciting. It was pretty cool to ride in new terrain, but I think I would get bored of these trails pretty quickly if I lived here. They are mostly flat, with some moderate technical bits. There are a few missing signs, which makes route finding difficult in a few places. I rode most of the singletrack of the trail system in under two hours with lots of photo breaks. It’s my understanding that you can link these trails into a nearly limitless ride … but you would likely need local knowledge for that.

I did find a couple cool discoveries along the way. The first was this cool old delivery truck. I must be the King Supreme Old Truck Manifester, because wherever I go I can always find old trucks to take pictures of. This day was no exception, apparently! I like the above shot … now you know why the truck was stranded here.

I climbed around on the inside of the truck. There were some pots and pans and some silverware, and it seems that the inside of the truck has provided shelter for some persons through the years.

I really like the thorns in this shot. I also like wide angles and f/22!

Eventually I made my way along the sandy, rocky singletrack.  I was just riding along, when I noticed the great texture of the cracked and broken mud.  As I was looking down, I caught a glimpse of my second found treasure of the afternoon.

This seashell is small, less than an inch long.  It was sitting perfectly in the middle of a cracked piece of mud.  It was perfectly clean, without any mud residue.  How did it get here? Did someone place it here? Did they hope for someone to find it to mess with their head? If they did; It worked!

Well that’s all for another mountain bike adventure in the far reaches of the country. Check back tomorrow when I check out the trails outside of El Paso.

I had one more day with my Nikon D200 Infrared camera that I had on load from Mitchell. It was an overcast grey day, so I didn’t get any pictures with the high contrast and striking light foliage on the trees.  I did get a picture of Buddy with his “look like you’re going fast” face on.

I did find out why this trail used to be called the Barge Canal.  Back in the 30′s the government thought it would be a really cool idea to build a barge canal across Florida, because it’s oh so far to go all the way around the bottom. Eventually they realized that it would be an environmental disaster, and the plan was shelved. The bonus, is now there is a government owned Cross Florida Greenbelt with multi-use trails, and one particularly good mountain biking area.

So as you can imagine, there aren’t really any hills in Florida mountain biking unless they are man-made.  Santos sit on an old (limestone?) quarry, which means it actually has some rocky, technical up and down areas.  The trail designers did a very good job in making sure that there isn’t a stretch of straightaway!  It’s another great place to practice your cornering in drifty pine needle sweepers.

In addition to some great trail riding, there is some great man made features.  Along the trails you will find some bridges and rails.  But in the big quarry, the have built some huge features!  There is a pump track and a huge dirt jump series on a long downhill.  There is also a 20 foot drop that has a chain and a padlock across it.  You can see riders going big there in a 2008 Santos Vortex Freeride Competition Video. Not too shabby, but nothing like the Boulder Valmont Park is going to be!  Here is a shot of me dropping one of the smaller jumps.  Yeah, it’s blurry.  I wasn’t shooting it so cut me some slack!

There are many things in life that we wish that we could do, or that we could do better. I’ve always wanted to learn to ride a wheelie, ever since I was a little BMX punk in the 80s. Why didn’t I know how? Simple. I never took the time to learn! There are so many things that we could improve in our lives, if we took the time to dedicate, commit, and schedule the time to grow.  The best part about learning new things, is that once we learn them, it usually doesn’t take much time to maintain proficiency. Take the juggling photo that I posted yesterday for example. I learned when I was in high school, and I can still do it, even though I never practice.

Learning balance is also metaphoric in our lives. The scariest part of learning the wheelie is overcoming the fear that you are going to go over the back and wind up on your ass! So the key, is really to spend time in the uncomfortable zone, the place that is the scariest.  By spending time in areas that make us uncomfortable, we eventually adapt.  We learn that we can go over the edge, and recover, and that we can do so without injury. How do you know where the balance point is, if you never go past it?

In order to ride the wheelie, you really need to center your mind, and discard thoughts of negativity. Embracing a positive outlook, learning balance, and overcoming fear are all unexpected side effects that I’ve realized as a result of a simple attempt to learn a frivolous trick. The practice has become a meditation. Yes, there is the side bonus wheelies are a great way to get looks of confusion from your neighbors, and smiles from the neighborhood kids!

Happy 2011! I’m looking forward to a new year of learning and growth, love and gratitude, wheelies and whatever new adventures appear along the way. Thanks for reading and your support. I hope you continue to enjoy the images and the words.

**Addition to this post!**

I was riding down a paved bike path, and I was riding a particularly long wheelie. I could see a small group of riders coming around a small bend. So I’m riding along mid-wheelie, and lo and behold, THERE WAS ANOTHER RIDER RIDING MID-WHEELIE TOWARDS ME! I was absolutely shocked! We both rode by each other, and neither of us put the wheel down while we were in sight. All I had time to say was, “Well you don’t see that every day!”, as we passed.

I’ve been a bike fanatic almost my whole life, and I rarely (if ever) see a random person riding a long wheelie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in 10 years of living in Boulder, which is a bike-crazy town. But on New Years Day, 1-1-11, I simultaneously encountered another guy riding a wheelie at the exact same time as me. Right after I published a blog story about riding wheelies! I call that a very auspicious start to a New Year.

I believe in some crazy ideas about the world around us. Things that science nor religion nor conventional thinking can explain. I believe, that we can make things happen merely by thinking them. It’s called the Law of Attraction. The naysayers can say it can’t be proven, it’s a cult, The Secret was a crappy book . . . whatever. You could say that the wheelie thing is just a minor coincidence that doesn’t mean anything. But that would just be pessimism. Embrace the big picture. If you open your mind to the world around us, then you will start to see, our thoughts shape our lives in ways that we can’t even imagine. Some call these things miracles, some call them God, or Allah, or the Universe, or Magic, or Karma . . . but no matter what you call it . . . it’s really there.

I haven’t always been a positive dude. I was actually voted “most pessimistic” in high school! But that kind of thinking . . . has taught me something. It’s made me see how I’ve been holding myself back by thoughts of “it won’t work for me”, “you have to work hard for money”, “you have to pay your dues”, etc. have been holding me back. I know this. I know you need to think positive. Everyone does. But it’s really freakin’ hard to remember to keep that chin up when you are confronted with a seemingly tragic event. But you have to. Everything happens exactly as it’s supposed to. And sometimes things get hard to teach you a lesson. If you pay close attention, and learn the lesson . . . then you open yourself to the great things that can come your way . . . if you clear your mind of the negative chatter . . . and allow the space for the great things to come to you.

There is an entire world of possibility out there! There are incredible things happening all the time if you open your eyes to them! The images on the TV screen are not designed to expand your mind, they are designed to entice your ego into wanting more and into buying all the crap they are selling! Read more inspiring books! Eat good food! Get out there and learn to ride wheelies like you are 10 years old!!!

Let’s have 3 cheers for 2011! Here’s to positive thoughts, positive thinking, dreaming big, and making 2011 the biggest goal-reaching, joy-feeling, soul-finding year ever!

I’m always on the lookout for a cool photo of course. I came along the powerlines and immediately the idea for this photo popped into my head. It has nothing to do with the feel of the actual trails, but I love the striking composition nonetheless.

On Thanksgiving Day, Scott and I began learning how to ride wheelies on our mountain bikes. A month later, I’m getting pretty decent at it, and on a good run can ride pretty far down the street.  Here is a shot my dad took of me on Christmas day. Short sleeves FTW!

I showed up during the middle of the Elite Women race. Special shout out to USF Bike Club alum Nicole Grant/Druse/Duke who got 3rd both days! Hmm, maybe I’ll have to bust it out next year as a downgrade yet another Masters age bracket. At any rate, the Yeti was out there cheering on the racers at the top of the big run up.

First lap of the Elite Mens Race, and Saturday’s winner Jeremy Powers has a huge gap.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t hold it, and eventually his tire was cut by a sprinkler head and he was forced out of the lead group.

The big excitement of the day was that the run up wasn’t really a run up for half the field.  The little tiny second barrier allowed for the men to bunnyhop and ride the whole climb.

Overall it was a super fabulous day on the front range, the the course was really at a great location.  But, I’m really excited for next year when the races will be only a couple blocks from my house at the new Valmont Bike Park!

Every time I see this trashed car on the Picture Rock Trail I think that I want to do a photo shoot there. It’s just not really all that accessible other than by bicycle. My Bianchi Rita has so many portraits done of it that I’m going to have to give it it’s own Facebook page.

This was the third trail building day out of the year out at Betasso. There are many more days required before the trail will be open for riding. So do your part and gather your friends and come out for the next work days. As a bonus, there will be food and beverages and beers to be had at the end of the day. Check out BMA’s website for the latest schedule and calendar of events.

I did my first two rides in the high country this weekend! The trails are running sweet in Ned, with the exception of the higher stuff which is still clogged with snow.  I got turned around on School Bus by snow drifts.  But I did ride the new Re-Root section of Root Canal.  It’s pretty sweet and even has a couple rock features.

I was riding solo so I don’t have any action pics.  Just a couple tilt shift still life portraits of the Bianchi SS.

This post is an oldie, but a goodie, so I’m going to recycle it!  I haven’t been posting any mountain bike pictures because I don’t have time to ride any more, so let’s just reminisce about the good old days of unemployment!

Back when I bought my first camera (a Canon 20d), I pulled it out of the box and went straight to Moab for the annual Ellsworth Owners Retreat.  I really didn’t know what I was doing at the time, but I got a pretty cool sequence anyway.  Yeah, I should have used a faster shutter speed!  Any way, this drop is really nuts!  It is way bigger looking when you are there, because the rider has to bomb down another 30+ vertical feet of steep runout past what you can see here.

After the ride we Ned-itated in the woods and drank some post-ride refreshments and played with my new 85mm PC Tilt Shift lens.  Don’t even think about stealing Bobby’s beer.  He’ll give you the stink eye.

I’ve waited a while to post these pictures to make it seem as if I’m out riding my mountain bike. Those folks who just glance at the pictures will think, “Wow Steve Z has such an amazing rock star life, shooting photos and all kinds of great rides in the mountains!” But all you 3 people who actually read the posts will know that this is just the 2nd day that I rode 2 weekends ago in Keystone! Ah well, someday I’ll get back in the regular schedule, I hope. In the meantime, this was the final section of the Colorado Trail from Keystone to Breckenridge that I haven’t ridden yet.

This last little piece was a random little spur of barely there trail on the way back to Keystone Ranch. Tilt-shift epic-ness!