RJBPhoto Blog

This weekend I went and shot some photos at the 2009 Tulsa Tough competition. Its a 3-day bike race with lots of different events and all kinds of fun stuff.

I went unprepared, having only shot Autocross before and having only read this article on cycling photography. Overall I shot 2000+ images. If you were at the event and would like me to look through my photos to see if I captured anything good you’d like to see, shoot me an e-mail and I’d be happy to look through everything I have. (photos@robertdx.net) The current collection of photos is viewable by clicking on this link here. I’m not sure if I’ve got the color in these right, I feel they might be over saturated.

There were lots of photographers out, and some of their photos have started to show up on blogs and flickr. I learned a lot more about sports photography. This is a shot of Daniel Ramsey (#98) crossing the finish line of the final event. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to pull of this photo since lots of people were trying to capture it.

Plus, some guy’s dog almost ran in front of the cyclists. Pro tip: Canon 40D in one hand, beer in the other hand, and dog leash in your other hand means you should not be on the racetrack screwing up everyone else’s shot. Asshole.

And here is Shelley Olds. She won a lot of events this weekend too. Pretty cool because she is sponsored by Tulsa’s Double Shot Coffee Company. I managed to capture a different kind of finish line photo for her. She was in 2nd place on the last lap and managed to pull off an impressive lead right at the end. (more photos of Shelley Olds here).

Overall I got lots of awesome pictures that I like. Some of the staging before each race was pretty cool. One of the announcers commented on how much testosterone was on the start line (there was a lot).

I wasn’t expecting to see Team Type 1 there. It was a little weird, since I’ve been Type 1 diabetic since I was 2 years old. I wanted to yell out something dorky like “I’m type 1 too!” but I also didn’t want to startle them or anything. One of the announcers said that one of the riders lost an insulin pump which sounds very scary. I also learned that one of the riders was seriously injured on the wreck that happened on Saturday. I hear she is doing better now though! Jen McRae finished 3rd in the omnium, and both team members were towards the front of the pack for most of the Pro Cat 1-2 race. (Click here for more photos of Team Type 1).

My favorite thing to photograph was the water bottle area (is that the best name for it?). People would hold out bottles of water, bikers would grab and drink them, and then toss them aside. Pretty awesome from a photography viewpoint.

I can’t remember where I read that sports faces are the funniest faces. Its true. As these bikers pushed themselves to their limits going up and down hills at 30mph in 90 degree heat, you could really see it on their faces. Funny, but also very cool.

The Tulsa Police Department was out in full force to direct traffic and such. This officer did a really great job of getting cars up an down the street between the waves of bikers. Its a hard task especially with drivers that can’t seem to follow directions. Impressive, to say the least. I really do love the Tulsa Police Department, its such a shame this town has so many criminals.

Right now I’m uploading more and more photos to my flickr account. In the coming day’s I’ll probably restrict the photos down so they can only be viewed with a special link. I like to keep most of my photostream clean, but I also like letting people know there are pictures up there for them to browse through if they’d like to.

I wish I had gone to more than just the final day, but to be honest I was -very- tired after only going to the one. I’m not very Tulsa Tough. Lots of walking around, ugh. But… I’m inspired. Team Type 1 was pretty impressive, and to know that there are people out there like me that can do that well lets me know that I could maybe someday achieve a similar (albeit lesser) level of physical fitness.

Tags: bicycling, bike, bike race, criterium, cycling, daniel ramsey, oklahoma, riverside, road race, shelly olds, tulsa, tulsa tough

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 3:33 pm and is filed under road cycling, sports, tulsa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.