San Francisco Grand Prix
Back in 2003 San Francisco held its annual “Grand Prix” bike race – this was before it morphed into the Tour of California.
The previous year I was a little surprised by the race – it was happening not too far away from my neighborhood – and I made a note to try to watch some of the race next time.
So I made my way to the course – which was right around the area of town that I was about to move to. I didn’t really think to grab my camera though, so all I had was my little point and shoot digitial camera – this would have been my Olympus camera from the early days of digital – the frustrating shutter lag and relatively poor image quality days.
Even still, I think I managed to grab some of the excitement of the event. (I also considered this photo for the weekly choice, but ultimately preferred the chosen shot.)
Throughout the race I chose a couple of vantage points – along the hill climb on Russian Hill and just past one of the 90 degree turns from Broadway onto Polk street. This made for a great place to take shots but was also an awesome place to watch the action. The riders would come whipping around the corner at pretty good speeds right at you and it was more than once that I considered it a possibility that one would crash into the crowds. Worse still were the chase vehicles, their tires chirping as they skipped through the turn.
I shot this image on ‘program’ mode, with this camera there was no point in trying to control the camera in any kind of manual setting. The shutter speed was 1/400th of a second, which was enough to grab a sharp image of the rider in the center of the frame while the closer rider has just enough motion blur to convey the sense of action in the scene.
There’s a bit of lens flare in the shot, a result of the angle of the sun in relation to where I’m standing (and the fact that there was nothing shielding this small lens from the harsh light). But I don’t find it to be too distracting.
It’s too bad that the Grand Prix hasn’t continued, as I really enjoyed it. But I did see this year an advertisement for the Giro di San Francisco – which is the continuation of some of the smaller races around Levi Plaza that used to be a part of the larger Grand Prix. Unfortunately I saw the ad after the event had already taken place.. so I’ll have to keep an eye out for it next year.
