So I heard a few days ago that there would be a downhill race out over in Mae On.. Also this was going to be a well organized bash with some top pros coming, Steve Peat (world champ from UK) would be there and some others.
Mae On is past my place heading a bit more into the hills and figured I would go check it out. I was told it was practice in the morning and race in the afternoon.. Well I got there at around 11:30 or 12 and there was only a few to go.. Good job I wasnt any more late, but actually worked out well to see the prime riders in a short bit of time then bounce.
Lovely area also, nice lake and what looked to be a few trail options to explore.. Also the downhill singletrack, I was told further up the hills was 'almost too steep to walk up' which makes me think I might take the trials bike over there and see how much I can manage heading back uphill.
I was messing with my camera setup.. Thought I was getting OK shots out of the zoom they looked OK on the viewfinder so I kept shooting with it the whole time, but once home and viewed full size and cropped the vast majority are junk
I should have had a try with my new fast f1.4 prime, it would have nailed an awful lot more of these and I could have cropped instead of zoom.. You live and learn, Bit of a novice with the DSLR in the more manual modes. Otherwise a good external flash would have kicked some of these into faster shutter speeds and brighter / more 'pop' type images.
Love the kids faces in the lower right hand corner !!
This guy only just rescued this landing by the skin of his teeth.. saw a few people patched up, in neck braces and ambulance stretchers going up and down.. One was holding an arm with some pain on his boat race. Have to say, the ones I saw were going pretty hard at it.. Brave !!
I got a good spot at the jump but a couple of Thai guys kept waiting till the last second then jumping out in front of me.. OK fair enough once or twice but give it a break, they had a perfectly good spot to view, could see I was trying to shoot, yet started fcuking up every one of my pics simply to be 1 ft closer to the track.. They knew they were getting in the way too but just didnt give a shit. Tried to remain jai yen about it but struck me as a d1ck move for no reason.. Theirs is the arm you can see cutting into above.. From then on in they basically screwed up every shot at the jump and made shooting there impossible.. After 4 or 5 in a row I gave up on them being considerate and went further down and caught a few..
To be honest even some of the blurry ones I kinda liked as speed blur.
The last few riders, Including Steve Peat (in red here) really flew !! wheels just connecting in bounces and went through the course at a blistering pace.. Impressed.
A few more of the better ones I was left with here..
CNX Downhill MTB - Best - a set on Flickr
All of the ones that were in any way salvageable. CNX downhill MTB - All - a set on Flickr
Mae On is past my place heading a bit more into the hills and figured I would go check it out. I was told it was practice in the morning and race in the afternoon.. Well I got there at around 11:30 or 12 and there was only a few to go.. Good job I wasnt any more late, but actually worked out well to see the prime riders in a short bit of time then bounce.
Lovely area also, nice lake and what looked to be a few trail options to explore.. Also the downhill singletrack, I was told further up the hills was 'almost too steep to walk up' which makes me think I might take the trials bike over there and see how much I can manage heading back uphill.
I was messing with my camera setup.. Thought I was getting OK shots out of the zoom they looked OK on the viewfinder so I kept shooting with it the whole time, but once home and viewed full size and cropped the vast majority are junk
I should have had a try with my new fast f1.4 prime, it would have nailed an awful lot more of these and I could have cropped instead of zoom.. You live and learn, Bit of a novice with the DSLR in the more manual modes. Otherwise a good external flash would have kicked some of these into faster shutter speeds and brighter / more 'pop' type images.
Love the kids faces in the lower right hand corner !!
This guy only just rescued this landing by the skin of his teeth.. saw a few people patched up, in neck braces and ambulance stretchers going up and down.. One was holding an arm with some pain on his boat race. Have to say, the ones I saw were going pretty hard at it.. Brave !!
I got a good spot at the jump but a couple of Thai guys kept waiting till the last second then jumping out in front of me.. OK fair enough once or twice but give it a break, they had a perfectly good spot to view, could see I was trying to shoot, yet started fcuking up every one of my pics simply to be 1 ft closer to the track.. They knew they were getting in the way too but just didnt give a shit. Tried to remain jai yen about it but struck me as a d1ck move for no reason.. Theirs is the arm you can see cutting into above.. From then on in they basically screwed up every shot at the jump and made shooting there impossible.. After 4 or 5 in a row I gave up on them being considerate and went further down and caught a few..
To be honest even some of the blurry ones I kinda liked as speed blur.
The last few riders, Including Steve Peat (in red here) really flew !! wheels just connecting in bounces and went through the course at a blistering pace.. Impressed.
A few more of the better ones I was left with here..
CNX Downhill MTB - Best - a set on Flickr
All of the ones that were in any way salvageable. CNX downhill MTB - All - a set on Flickr
