Nature Valley Grand Prix – Velonews June 7, 2008

The following is the caption and image from pages 14 & 15 of the July 7th issue of Velonews

TWILIGHT GRIT

With the sun setting behind, Health Net – Maxxis riders Roman Kilun and Tim Johnson led the peloton during the stage 4 twilight criterium at the Nature Valley Grand Prix, held Friday, June 13th in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Health Net’s Kirk O’Bee won the stage, his second of the race, while teammate Rory Sutherland won stage 5 the following day and took the overall classification.


It was 8:45 on Friday the 13th in downtown Minneapolis, and the Men’s Nature Valley Grand Prix Minneapolis Criterium was in the final lap. The sun was setting and with one lap to go the riders were jockeying for position at about 30 mph. The finishing straight is on 10th Avenue heading due east, which makes the finish line shot straight into the sun.

With a low angle, shooting from my knees I was down the course on the right, at a point where the riders swing left to prepare for the next right-hand turn. Although I would normally over expose by 2/3 of a stop shooting with such strong back lighting (to bring out the detail of the riders) at 1/640th and 3200 ISO, my 400 mm f2.8 was wide open!

Here is another shot, this one from the final stage on Sunday, July 15th. I was midway up the brutal Chilkoot hill that is in excess of a 20% grade. The men climb Chilkoot 18 times.



This image is again at 1/640th, f9 and 500 ISO. Again because of the backlighting here I was able to over expose by 1/3 of a stop to bring out the detail in the riders' faces.