Velodrome

I went with 4 co-works that I ride bike with to a local velodrome in Blaine, MN. One of the guys actually races there weekly and the others were just trying it out. I opted to take photos instead but I'm willing to admit that the track scares me a bit. The end embankments are 42 degrees then tapper down - but not much. The other scary thing is that they were using real track bikes that don't have the ability to coast. So you always have to be turning the pedals or else the pedals will start turning you! Crazy! After watching it for the first time, I thought that it looked kinda fun. But it will still be a while before I'll try it.

Mostly I went along to try out my new 70-200mm Canon zoom. It's an awesome lens that I got just before the Tokyo trip. I wanted to try it out on active subjects because I don't have a lot of experience doing that. With the longer lens I could get farther away and keep them in focus more easily. It was still hard though and I missed many many times. Got to love deleting on the fly. The auto focus was never fast enough. By the time it ranged the subject they were already closer and out of focus. It worked better to use manual focus, find a spot to set the focus, then shot as they entered that zone of focus. The photo finish shot on the left was a rapid fire shot of 4 frames. that I combined in Photoshop. They weren't really racing each other.

The rest of my photos are on Flickr