Finally feeling like October

Around 1:30 today, I texted Drew to see if he wanted to go out and shoot some biking pictures. Probably just for an hour out by Peat Hill, nothing too special. But his text back was that he was riding Leverage at 2, so I packed up quickly and headed out to the trails.

Annnnnd it was raining when we left the house :( Then on the way out it cleared up :) Then at the trail head, it started snowing :D

So I started playing this game on the way up....while Drew and Bryce rode up, I sprinted ahead of them, set up a shot, shot them as they rode past, then repeated the cycle. All while snow was steadily falling harder and harder. Wonderful photo conditions. Just wonderful. Drew hammed it up for the camera, and I got some great photos of him cranking up the trail.

But the best photo was actually his idea. About midway up the trail, there's a clear patch on top of a hill that looks out over Gallatin Valley. We all got up on top, and I thought it might be nice to get a shot of Drew riding up. But then Drew suggested that I get on top of the hill and look down the trail, getting it snaking it's way up the hill and the valley in the background.

So I got up there, and had the guys ride up. Unfortunately, they were paced out quite a bit...which wasn't what I was really looking for. But...that could be fixed. I just held the camera in the same stop for the length of both riders to pass from the frame, taking pictures every little bit to get them both in a variety of spots.

I shot at ISO400, f4.5 and 1/800. I had been shooting in the forest before that, so I still had the same settings. I could have shot with a higher aperture to get a sharper photo, but f4.5 was good enough. It's still a sharp photo.

Then in editing, I simply took the two rider positions that worked the best together, and then composited them into one frame.

But before that, I did some editing in Lr. This was sort of a night of experimenting with Lr. I did more of the washed out blacks look that is so popular as of late. Not very realistic, but I do like how it looks. Essentially, you raise the black point until the darkest blacks are a dark shade of gray. But I kept the whites in there, because I just hate to have photos that don't have whites. It used to be photos with out blacks, but now I like bright photos. Maybe I'll eventually level out.

To start off the edit, I converted to b/w. Then I went into the tone curve and did some adjustments. Rising the blacks a bit, then darkening the shadows just to improve contrast a bit. For the whites, I upped them a littttttle bit. Not much. On to the general adjustments, I upped the contrast a bit. Funny, because I could have done that in the tone curve, but whateverrrr. Then the highlights down a bit, and the whites. This gave a little more detail to the highlights. Then clarity a bit. More contrast in the mid tones.

For compositing the riders, I chose two frames that put them on the upper portion of the trail, closer to the viewer. If they were in the back, the view would become the subject, not the riders. It would be a cool photo, but I wanted the riders to be the subject. So, just using layer masks, I painted the two riders in when I wanted. To be precise, I layered a photo of Drew over one of Bryce, then painted white on a black layer mask where Drew was to show up. I hope that made sense....

This was my favorite photo of the day...but there was one other I really liked. I feel that it just captured the day, and of biking in general. Just sitting on a bike, in the forest, in the snow, staring at the hills you're about to rip through.

See you tomorrow!