I posted on Saturday evening a quick series of portraits. These were quick edits and I noted in the post that I may take them down after I edit the images and see them on my larger monitor. Well….I deleted that post from a few days ago and am reposting today my Starting Line Portraits.
I shared that I went to Trans Iowa really to support my friends and have some fun. I needed a break. Before I left for the weekend I received on loan a unique and fairly rare camera lens. I decided to try to snap as many portraits as I could with it in the 45 minutes or so before the event. All in all I did OK and today I am sharing 22 images, this time mostly in color.
While the performances are truly inspirational at events like this, I find my self drawn more and more to the people. These events are incredible and I love shooting the event and challenging myself to capture images that reflect being there and maybe a little bit of emotion and feeling in doing the event. While I am pleased with those results I shared previously, it is the people and the community that make these events special for me. I’m bummed I couldn’t take pictures of everyone and all the volunteers. There just isn’t enough time and once the event started there is no chance.
I did have a project in mind that I was not able to complete given the race unfolded the way it did. I guess if Mark does a V12 I’ll need to try to make it back to finish what I started.
A few of these are quite soft. That is a result of the lens I was using, an f.95 lens. This lens has such a narrow depth of field that if the subject moves even a centimeter the focus is completely out of whack. It’s also hard to manually focus just right. I think I did OK with it though. I love these pictures. So…With that, here are some portraits I rather like.
Thanks again to my friend Mark, Guitar Ted, whom puts on this event with the help of many others. Thanks to the Grinnell community for hosting again. Thanks to all the riders whom inspired me/us and let me take a picture or two of them.
ImagineGnat 
Wow! What a great project. I agree- It’s about the people and that’s what makes this- and other events- what they are. Well done.
I appreciate this kind of project too. One question, why did you shoot all at F. 95 if depth of field was a concern, you could stop up a little bit to F 1.2 etc. Assuming a decent guess you are shooting on micro 4/3 to want a super fast lens like that (I shoot M 4/3 too). Nice photos sir.
Ryan thanks for the comment. I used .95 because of how I shot. It was dark and only lit by street lights. No flash. It was on a m43 camera so I wanted to keep ISO at 1600 or below. Some of these shots were 1/15th of a second. It was really just for fun and to see what the camera and lens could do.