Le Touquet 2007 - 1000 Mad Motorcycles

Mike Werner

I spent last weekend at Le Touquet making photos of this mad event. 1,000 motorcycles riding on 15.5 km beach for 3 hours.

There were gale force winds, hail and rain, but still they kept going.

I was trying my new Nikon 70-200 2.8, but my Nikon camera died in the rain (despite plastic wrapping), so switched to the Fuji S3Pro (slower).

The bulk of the photos (930) can be viewed here.
http://motorbiker.smugmug.com/gallery/2466586#129364988

Here are a few done with the 2.8. I'm not totally satisfied with the results, since you need to get used to the speeds the bikes go around, and auto focus is a problem, so ended up focussing myself. What do you think?



Here, the 1,000 bikes, after a 7 km long straight on the beach, try to squeeze through the first man made hill. The sky was totally gray..



Focussing with all that sand blowing up is not easy, hence the manual focus.



This was taken in to direct sunlight (whatever there was).



Manually focussed.



I was trying to get the image of speed, not easy.

DoctorIt

that first group shot is excellent - really sets the mood.

the individual shots don't grab my attention as much. like you said, that element of speed isn't quite as prominent as you would hope.

Mike Werner

DoctorIt wrote:

that first group shot is excellent - really sets the mood.

the individual shots don't grab my attention as much. like you said, that element of speed isn't quite as prominent as you would hope.

Yeah, I shot about 20 on the first hill. Just don't like the colors, it's bland, but the weather was gray, so not much you can do.

The close ups are indeed difficult, since it's very difficult to portray speeds on manual focus, and with auto, it kept getting distracted by all the sand. Don't really know what to do..

gsgary

Mike Werner wrote:

Yeah, I shot about 20 on the first hill. Just don't like the colors, it's bland, but the weather was gray, so not much you can do.

The close ups are indeed difficult, since it's very difficult to portray speeds on manual focus, and with auto, it kept getting distracted by all the sand. Don't really know what to do..

Some nice shots, wish i could have been there just got accreditation for AMCA MX events
Did you have it set on centre focus dont think the sand should have caused too much of a problem
This is with my 10D + 70-200 not as fast as my 1D but it copes with mud ok (centre focus)

Mike Werner

It's the difference between beach sand and mud sand. I've done MX shots, and never had a problem, but the beach sand is thin and floats like a mist. I've got tons of shots where you can not see the riders, just the mist of fine sand.

Yes, it was set to center focus. Don't think it would work on other positions..

LuckyBob

I really like the first photograph - I think it conveys the scale of the event quite well. I spent a few minutes in Photoshop messing with it and an idea occured - a strong sand storm means it'd be fairly easy to fake some detail into that grey sky I didn't spend much time on the color used in the sky, but you get the idea.

Mike Werner

LuckyBob wrote:

I really like the first photograph - I think it conveys the scale of the event quite well. I spent a few minutes in Photoshop messing with it and an idea occured - a strong sand storm means it'd be fairly easy to fake some detail into that grey sky I didn't spend much time on the color used in the sky, but you get the idea.

Nice... I did something similar, getting the sand more yellow and pronounced. But made the sky even more grey. I'll see if I can find it and post it.

gsgary

Mike Werner wrote:

It's the difference between beach sand and mud sand. I've done MX shots, and never had a problem, but the beach sand is thin and floats like a mist. I've got tons of shots where you can not see the riders, just the mist of fine sand.

Yes, it was set to center focus. Don't think it would work on other positions..

Ive never tried shoting MX on sand will have to give it a go at Mablethorpe UK were the have sand racing all different types of bikes are used