June 22, 2003
Wow! It's All Coming Together
I've had a lot of frustrating starts and stops with my Finke Race photos -- problematic scans, problematic printers, problematic web displays.
On 31die's wise counsel, I went for quicker&smaller&rougher on pictures I scanned for the web. I chose to spend my energies working on high quality prints instead.
It was a great payoff -- the prints' color, sharpness, exposure are coming out extremely well. Much better than any of 72dpi webpage scans.
I've been printing A3 (297mm x 420mm) photos this evening and the resolution is beautiful. It makes me curious how much more I could blow these out -- they are looking great. At these A3 dimensions my images are 365 pixels per inch. My understanding is that as long as they're bigger than 240 pixels per inch, I'm in very good shape.
Learned a few more lessons about the Epson 2100 and Photoshop 7.
1) I think it is always good counsel to clean the ink cartridge before you do a round of printing. Yes, theoretically it wastes ink, but I only print perhaps a few times per month. Invariably the nozzles plug. I end up wasting the ink anyway, as my first photo turns out a banded, wretched mess.
2) I was fucking up Image Resizing for printing. I was leaving 'Resample Image' on -- this was producing lots of bogus resolution. As well, I was leaving the 'Maximize Image' selection on. Epson explicitly warns that this can lead to ugly banding and other crap effects.
So now that I am comfortable with my print output, I can start looking more artistically and editorially at some of my photos and make some nice displays.
Wheeeee
June 15, 2003
Dangerously close to disaster
This montage (click it for a bigger image) was hair-raising for both the riders and the photographer.
Picture this. It's 730am on Prologue Day at the Finke. The temperature, which the MC keeps gloating about, is hovering a few degrees above 0C. I'm holding an expensive metal tube full of glass with bare hands and feeling the pain of it.
I'm dutifully taking shots in the morning's warm, low-angle sun. The race is starting out with the bizarre 'Outfits' class -- dirtbikes with sidecars. The sidecar drivers are not passive riders. They're hanging their ass out all over the bike to help it corner faster.
As the third crew to pass around the turn I'm watching comes roaring by, something catches! I think the driver caught the heavy dirt shoulder of the turn. In a flash I'm watching the bike roll over and the riders tumble through the air!
It was sort of like being in a car wreck myself. Everything was momentarily slow-motion. I remember realizing, "yeah, I'm aimed right on this wreck with a gigantic lens, and a monster camera with a power boost-drive." Then I remember considering for another agonizing moment, "is it rude to be photographing these guys flying through the air?". And then finally deciding, "Hell no! They'll enjoy the photographs better than anyone." and then snapping away.
I felt like an absolute hero for about five minutes. The guys (#1025 Steve Harvey and Mark Green from Taperoo) had righted their bike, restarted it, and finished the prologue. I'm grinning ear-to-ear for having caught this on film.
Then I re-inspect my film settings and realize, "holy fucking shit. holy fucking shit.
I suck.
I hate myself.
I suck.
I hate myself.
I suck.
I hate myself.
I suck.
I hate myself.
I really hate myself.
My clumsy, numb fingers had accidentally whacked the exposure setting down more than one stop. The photos were junk!
I cannot convey how disgusted with myself I was. I even digressed to hoping another outfit wiped out at the exact same spot for me to capture. This time I promised myself to have the exposure dialed in right, and hold down the shutter trigger as if it were a Vulcan chain gun.
Alas, and of course, it didn't happen. I consoled myself that maybe I could use Photoshop to torture a decent picture out of the data. And in fact, the rough draft you see above is reasonably salvaged. I probably can do a better job with more effort, but it's good enough for now.
At any rate, it was a good lesson for me, and I assiduously checked the exposure wheel from then on. As well, I tried to track the vehicles with my lens whether I was shooting or not. There's never enough time to catch a crash in midair otherwise.
A Diet of Dust
Three hundred cars and bikes blasting through the desert generates an insane amount of dust. Nearly more than you can fathom. Choosing spots along the track from which to photograph had to take three things into consideration:
Safety
I saw scores of instances where cars were flying wide outside of turns, way inside of turns, and just off the course randomly. I gave myself a rule that I'd always keep an eye on the car, whether I was shooting it there or not. I had no interest in being run-down, even if I would get to watch the rest of the race from a helicopter.
Sun
The warm Outback sun was great, especially in the morning and late afternoon, so I was always aiming for to be between it and the driverss.
Dust
The dust clouds drift away like giant dirt zeppelins as the cars pass. As much as possible you try to find a location where the prevailing winds pushes the dirt cloud away from you, rather than over and through you. It seemed almost futile at times trying to keep my lens dust-free. I was constantly squirting it with a blower-bulb.
Vigorously Attacked the Jumps
Damien Brunello, from Mt. Isa, caught my attention 200m before this jump. I heard him coming, and watched as he never relented from the throttle as he took each of the jumps in series. No suprise that Damien came in 13th in his class.
Aristihtis Polychronopoulos Lands Firm
Bike 596, a Honda CRF 450, lays in another landing after a series of short jumps along the prologue circuit. Polychronopoulos finished 15th in his class of 36 finishers, and fifty entrants.
Ricky Chambers finishing up Day 1
Ricky Chambers (#969), from Alice Springs, crossing the wide, dry, and exceptionally sandy bed of the Finke River as he wraps up the first day's leg.
The Quad Racers (Class 9) seemed a determined crew, with only two of twenty-two entries failing to finish. Ricky finished 13th in his class, roughly an hour behind the fastest class 9, and two hours, forty minutes, behind the King of the Desert, Max Burrows and his monster vehicle.
It says volumes about determined drivers like these who suffer nearly twice as long as anyone else. And if that doesn't convince you of their good attitudes, I'll mention that Ricky was the only driver, of the hundreds I photographed, who actually waved as he went by.
Colin Johnson
Driver Colin Johnson and Co-pilot Leanne Walker slam their 3.5l Class 1 buggy around the Finke Prologue circuit. The Prologue race is a short (10-15km) circuit each driver faces the day before the race. Results from the prologue set the take-off order for the race itself. The farther back you start, the more choking dust you're forced to eat on the grueling 400km circuit. They ended up finishing as the 34th fastest car.
