Philadelphia Cycling Classic - June 2, 2013

These are all shot with my Nikon D90 and 70-300mm VR lens, and processed in Snapseed on a Mac. See images from past races here: 2010 | 2011

Photo of the week - July 17, 2012

Amsterdam. Nikon 50mm @ f/16, 1/20 sec., on a D90. Processed with Snapseed on an iPad

Magnificent TdF 2011 images

photo credits: Koen van Weel / Veeral Patel / Joel SagetThe Boston Globe just ran a two-part series with some of the best photos from this years Tour de France. These are absolutely fantastic images and truly inspiring (as a photographer, cyclist, and traveler). I'm totally breathless.

Click here for photo set #1.

See photo set #2 here.

I've been watching the Tour for about ten years, but it still always amazes me (a) how tough the riders are, (b) how close the fans get to the riders, (3) how high the mountains are, and (4) how beautiful France is. We were in Paris for a week a couple of years ago, but I'd really love to travel all around the beautiful country.

The prologue for the 2012 Tour starts in Liège, Belgium, on June 30th. Can't wait 'til then!

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As an aside, maybe NBC will get their act together in the next year and work out all the bugs in their streaming service. While it was really convenient to be able to watch from your computer, it was exceedingly frustrating to have the video cut out or freeze at all the critical moments of the race.

Tour de Thor

I'm writing this while watching* stage 18 of the 2011 Tour de France (Pinerolo ~ Galibier - Serre Chevalier). Today's stage has the makings of an exciting day in the mountains, but so far the highlight of this year's Tour has been the performance of my favorite rider in the peloton, the Norwegian Thor Hushovd. Thor is the reigning World Champion, having won that title in Australia towards the end of the 2010 season, is a two-time green jersey winner at the Tour de France (for points/sprints; not overall in the race), and to date has won ten stages at the Tour. He's been the undisputed star of the TdF so far this year, winning two stages, including one in the mountains (which is really impressive given that he's better known as a sprinter), and wearing the yellow jersey (for leader of the race) for a week. No, Thor is not going to win the Tour (this year or ever), but he's been the star of the race so far this year.

*BTW, it's fantastic that you can stream the Tour on your (office) computer (at least when you can get it work). While you'd think this would decrease my productivity, it actually has increased it. Rather than stay at home watching the Tour every morning for three weeks in July, I can go into the office and work while I watch! Maybe I can write my Tour subscription off as a work-related expense?

Photo of the week - July 19, 2011

The 2011 Philadelphia International Championship. Nikon 135mm DC @ f/2, 1/2500, on a Nikon D90. See more images from the race here.

Photo of the week - June 21, 2011

The 2011 Philadelphia International Championship. Nikon 135mm  DC @ f/2, 1/8000, on a Nikon D90. Converted with Nik Silver Efex Pro. See more images from the race here.

Photo of the week - June 7, 2011

The 2011 Philadelphia International Championship. Nikon 70-300mm @ f/4.5, 1/160, on a Nikon D90. Converted with Nik Silver Efex Pro. See more images from the race here.

Back!

In my last post I apologized for not being around much, so I won't go into that again. I will say that ScienceOfRelationships has been seeing some really good growth; it's fun to see a site take off. We've got some really interesting articles posted there, so check it out.

I haven't shot much since I got back from Vermont, but for those of you interested in cycling, yesterday was the Philadelphia International Championship, and Jen and I spend the day in Manayunk watching the race. I have some good pictures I'll be posting soon, with the hopes of reviving the Photo of the Week. If you want a sneak peak, see the album here.

Nikon D90 + 70-300mm VR lensI took two telephoto lenses to the race along with my beloved Tokina 11-16mm, a 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR and a 135mm f/2 DC (both Nikon), not knowing which would work the best. Last year I used the 85mm f/1.4, which didn't give quite the reach I wanted. I started with the 70-300mm and found that I couldn't get my shutter speed fast enough to really freeze the action (i.e., too much blur), at least at a low ISO. So I switched over to 135mm, which is really more of a portrait lens. Although I got a few good shots with the 135mm, it doesn't focus fast enough for action sports, so I went back to the 70-300mm but kicked the ISO up. This worked pretty well, and I got some good images this way. But now I see why the 70-200mm f/2.8 is so valuable; it would have been perfect for yesterday. I've got a year to save up for one before the 2012 race!

In addition to going to the bike race in Philadelphia yesterday, we also spent some time in the city looking at condos. Living in the city would be an interesting change of pace, but I don't know whether there's enough to do in Philadelphia to make it worth it. Philly seems to have all of the hassles of a city (traffic, parking, noise, grime) without any of the charms or things to do compared to cities I've spent time in (Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, the Twin Cities). I'd still like to move to Madison, but of course I've only spent time there in the summer.

Other stuff going on: I'm looking forward to today's WWDC announcements to see what new tricks Apple as up it's sleeve. I'm especially interesting in hearing about iTunes/iCloud, but I'm not confident it will be a solution for someone like me with a massive music library (~60k songs) that were not purchased from iTunes. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I've been playing with the Google Music beta over the last few days, but it seems like it has limited utility for me because (a) it doesn't support lossless file formats, which make up 2/3rds of my library, and (b) there's no iOS playback; just Android.

I'm also very curious to see if rumors about a robust network file sharing/sync solution pan out. I love dropbox.com, and I'm interested to see if Apple could best this great service.

We just got tickets to see the Jayhawks at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside this fall. It's great that one of my favorite bands is back together and touring, and they are supposed to have a new studio album coming as well. That, in addition to a new album from Gillian Welch, will make for a good summer of music.