bikes and things

Just been digging through yesterday’s Flickr stats for my account and looks like someone has used one of my images under the creative commons license I add to my images. Looks pretty good! Link to original page here.

My first go at using a remote flash last weekend with Dom at Swinley. Pretty pleased with this one although he did set most of it up and I just pressed the trigger.

Was good fun playing around with a remote flash. Dom had a cord which connected the flash to the camera to remotely fire it. This had been extended with a bit of old Cat5 networking cable so that it could be laid down on the ground. Unfortunately it’s quite easy to get the flash in the wrong place and end up with the riders arm casting a shadow over the face. Spent quite a bit of time after reading up on the Stobist website. Totally hooked on the idea of playing around with off camera flash now.

Just had confirmation that I’ve been accepted on a photo course with Seb Rogers in March next year. Seb has done some amazing mountainbiking photography and his pictures regularly appear in the UK and US mountainbiking magazines.

Hopefully this will improve my technique and enable me to get some better shots. Can’t wait! A few more details of last years course.

Went out to Swinley yesterday with Gav and a few of the guys from Chocolatefoot. Was a bit wet an soggy due to all the rain during the week. Did a few of the trails on Surrey Hill with the berms and tables in. Brilliant fun. Dom brought his camera and also his flash so spent a fair bit of time playing around with that and composing shots. His pictures are on his Flickr page and one of them is below. Ended up taking the Kobe out for the first time in 6 months. Felt pretty weird at first after riding a full suss for so long but started to really enjoy it towards the end. Looking forward to getting a flash and playing around lighting shots. A few of my pictures with the compact are here.

Winter seems to have arrived pretty sharpish. The ride to work has been pretty nippy recently. Don’t think I noticed it so much the last few years as I was only cycling down the road from Kennington to the South Bank.

The extra mileage is good (9 miles each way according to google maps) but I’ve realised I don’t have much in the way of winter cycling clothing. Just bought a new winter softshell jacket but need to invest in some tights to keep my legs warm. Getting a good ride in each day has helped the fitness and getting close to 100 miles a week fixed is pretty good.

Still waiting for the road bike and should be in ‘late November’. Think I’ll take it back over Christmas with one of the mountain bikes and do some rides round Bath.

Should be great! Mackerel gratin to follow….

Seeing as 2009 is rapidly approaching I started thinking about a new photography challenge. I’ve seen some of the people on Flickr who take a picture each day for a year, some are terrible and some are great. The terrible ones are just people taking a picture of themselves each day. Boooring. Thinking I might try and set up a new Flickr account just for this on the 1st Jan 2009.

365 project

…is on it’s way.

Voucher was on my desk when I got in to work so popped down to Condor to put it down on a new steel framed road bike. Unfortunately they were out of the pink one I wanted so I’m getting a 2009 model which is in a nice black colour – the stealth option. Unfortunately this means that the price also went up! Damn it.. plus Condor charge a handling fee on Cyclescheme vouchers of £50. More than I wanted to spend but never mind. The test ride was spot on. Lovely feel to it but felt weird having a freewheel on the road bike.

Just uploaded the photos from Scotland here.