Twilight Criterium

Saturday night in Boise they had what is called the Twilight Criterium. This is a bicycle race around 3 city blocks downtown. It is a pretty cool event, and Jess wanted to go down there to check it out.

When we arrived, the races were already going. In fact, we saw part of the women’s race. We watched a few laps then decided to go find a drink. Actually, we didn’t just find ‘a’ drink, we instead found 2 pitchers of mojitos at The Reef. Well, we were having a good time even if we couldn’t see the race.

After that, we decided to go see a little of the race. I wanted to try to take a few pictures. I don’t know if it was because of, or despite the alcohol intake, but I ended up with 2 really really cool pictures, and a few others that were interesting. Please click on the images to go to flickr.com and you can select “all sizes” just above the pic to see it larger. It helps to get a little more detail to appreciate them.

This picture is my favorite. I was trying to get a picture of the riders in focus with the background blurred by swinging the camera the same speed as they were going past me. I didn’t honestly think any of them would turn out, but got lucky with this one. How I was able to get focus on the furthest racer is beyond me. One of those happy accidents that can happen in photography.

This is another shot I like. They were screaming down the back straight at probably 40+ mph. I tried to get a sense of speed as they went past. I wish the camera would have been just a touch faster so the racers to the far right weren’t as blurry, but still, I think this one turned out really well.

Then, I took a couple of pictures of the pack as they were racing past me… the funny thing was, I took them on multiple laps, but somehow I ended up with a shot of the same guy in both of them. Completely random, but an interesting coincidence.

If you want to see more, (3 additional pics) just go to my flickr page here.