Pic Spocket

For the Canada Day/Independance day weekend, we took a few days off to get a nice 5-day-weekend. Since it’s a big vacation weekend in both countries, we are taking it easy staying local but enjoying the sun and the pool. On Friday, we took Newton to the beach at the Point Pelee National park for some beach time and swimming. Before heading back  home, we took the boardwalk in the marsh area with Newton.

It would be cool one time to rent one canoe to see the area from a different point of view. I do not know if Newton would stay quiet in there though.

Did not pass too much time looking for wildlife, but got to see many dragonflies, a huge turtle and a baby bird that followed us for a while.

As usual, more pictures in the album below!

Monday night we had our annual fireworks display over the Detroit River, between USA and Canada. This is a pretty big event since these fireworks are usually quite nice (they have a big budget). They put 3 platforms in the middle of the river, and they launch the fireworks from there.

One of the tricks in photographing fireworks, is to be reay to shoot the first burst: often, the best shots are happening at that time because the air is still clean. After a few bursts, there are a lot of smoke in the air, reducing visibility (and thus sharpness). This was certainly the case here. Here is my favorite shot, with the Detroit Rennaissance Center in the background. It’s really worth going in the album afterwards to see the 1000 pixel version.

Here are a few more pictures:

As usual, larger versions and more pictures available in the album below:

Target Fireworks 2010

Last weekend was the 2010 edition of the 2010 Red Bull Air Race stop in Windsor. Just back from Europe, I made some time to go with Corinne at the river to attend the qualification day and photograph this unusual event for the 3rd year in a row. I do not get to use the big camera anymore (no time!), so this was the perfect opportunity.

I have the collection of shots quite similar to the previous years. While very fast shutter speed is good to freeze the action, it makes the pictures look a bit static…

The red bull helicopter is never far, getting footage for television broadcast.

Teams on boats are always ready to put air pylons back in shape after a plane hit them.

This year, I also made sure to capture a few shots of the overall scene, to get a better sense of scale. These are really looking better in 1000 pixel wide (see album link at the bottom of the post)

Finally, I got a serie of very nice shots using a panning technique: deliberately using a slow shutter speed while tracking the subject so that you get the motion blur effect on the background. It’s hard to do, and you get a lot of missed pictures, but the ones that come out good are usually very dynamic. Here is a collection of these successful shots.

Finally, many more pictures and larger versions available in the album below!

2010 Red Bull Air Race

Next photo opportunity: Fireworks on the Detroit River on June 21. Stay tuned!

After my Half Ironman in Orlando, Florida, we went down to our usual spot in North Miami Beach for a well deserved week of vacation. We always said we’d like to go on one of these airboat tours in the past, but never acted on it. This time, Corinne made me give my word before we left Windsor that this time we would do it. And so we did! We went with my aunt, uncle and my mom also staying in Miami.

We went in the Everglades National Park, wetland covering a huge portion of southern Florida.

Here are a few pictures. The first one is of another boat we crossed path with.

We were hoping to see alligators during out tour, but no lock in the first half. We did see this very colorful bird:

Then we got to see a bunch (6 or 7) alligators in the second portion of our 1.5 hour tour. It was great! They actually seemed to be curious and did not try to get away when the airboat passed close to them.

Back on land, the guy said we could hold a “small” alligator in our hands if we wanted too. Imagining a baby, we said “Sure!”. Turns out the “small” alligator was 6 years old… Corinne and me got to hold it. Here is Corinne posing with our guide and her new friend…

More pictures in the album below!

Everglades Airboat

I did not touch my digital camera for months, but I took it out last Sunday to take maternity photos for our friends Tracy and Craig. Tracy is now 7 months pregnant, and it’s amazing to see how her tummy has grown in the last few months. Tracy herself was shocked when she looked at the pictures!

I am not gonna lie: I am much more comfortable taking pictures of landscapes, cityscapes or sports than any kind of protrait work. I am not too comfortable about directing people, and I really have no artistic feeling for this kind of work. Plus I tend to take a lot of time to setup and usually a bunch of test shots. No a good thing when you work with people. All in all, our friends were quite patient and a few pictures came out good I think. Hope they like some of them. Here are a few shots:

As usual, more in the album below!

Maternity Tracy & Craig

Things are taking shape for my first season of Half Ironman (HIM) long course triathlon races this year: I have registered and paid for hotels for Florida in May and Muskoka (Ontario) in September. My bike transport is also arranged for Florida. Traveling by plane with a bike is no fun at all. Rather than checking it in I will use Tri Bike Transport, a company that has trucks stopping in many bike stores across the country and delivers your bike right at the Ironman race venue without the need to take it apart. That makes things much simpler.

My training volume is currently at about 10 hours per week at this time. That may not seem like a whole lot, but that’s 10 hours of actually “doing” workouts. Considering most of my training sessions are at 45 to 60 minutes in duration each, that’s a lot of training sessions. There are many days with 2 sessions. Time adds up quickly when you include the preparation related to each session (drive to the location (pool, gym), setup the hardware, print/read the workout instructions, change, shower afterwards, etc). Right now, a typical week looks like this:

Monday: Rest day
Tuesday: 45 min swim at lunch; bike in the evening
Wednesday: Run + 30 min core strength
Thursday: 45 min swim at lunch; bike in the evening
Friday: Run + 30 min  core strength
Saturday: Long swim ; Long Bike
Sunday: Long Run + 30 min core strength

The weeks are going by quickly, I’ll tell you that! 

Bike Configuration 

I have finalized by bike configuration for the HIM races. I have made a few upgrades to my Time Trial Bike since posting about it. Here it is, in full race configuration:

It’s a Kuota K-Factor 2009 Time Trial Bike. In december, I went to a specialized shop in Saline, MI to get properly fitted on it. They raised my seat by 3/4″ and lowered my cockpit quite a bit (1.5″ IIRC). This will ride quite differently next spring.

The biggest upgrade on it is the set of ZIPP wheels. These are aerodynamic deep profile carbon rims. I am running a Zipp 808 rear (80 mm section) and a Zipp 404 front (60 mm section). I went for the ‘clincher’ version of the wheels rather than the ‘tubular’ (lighter) version because I would rather deal with a clincher tire if a flat would occur during a race. They are only slightly heavier than my original wheels, but that is mostly because the rear wheel hub is a Cycle Ops Powertap power meter (more below). Only downside is that the bike is more difficult to handle when there are a lot of crosswind (especially wind gusts), as I have experienced last fall. On the other side, the carbon rims absorb all the road defects really well and the ride becomes much more enjoyable with these wheels.

The rear wheel hub (Powertap unit) transmits wirelessly to both the bike computer and my Garmin GPS watch not only speed, distance and cadence but also the amount of power (in watts) that I am transmitting to the rear wheel. That information can be an invaluable tool for racing and training. It can help to pace yourself properly during a race. Here is a close-up of the Powertap unit. 

The funny thing is that the wheelset is worth more than the rest of the bike itself. I would normally never put that kind of money just on something like wheels, but I found an awesome deal on Ebay last fall for this barely used set that included the powertap already.

The saddle was replaced for a “Fizik Arione Tri 2” which is more comfortable and lighter than the original one. The red and white saddle also looks good with the bike’s color scheme.

Other than that, most of the additions are related to hydration, which is a key factor in endurance racing:

• Profile Design AeroDrink: the bottle in the cockpit that lets me take sips without getting out of the aero position;
• Profile Design Razor bottle system: the narrow profile bottle on the frame
• Beaker Concepts rear seat bottle holder bracket: holding 2 more bottles
• In the rear seat bracket is a small bag with everything I need to fix a flat including compressed air cans.

I added a nice personalization touch last week, thanks to Victory Circle Graphix : my bike is now sporting my name and country flag. How cool is that!

I have been putting a lot of time riding it indoors on the Computrainer (I have over 1000 km on the trainer since fall) but I can’t wait for the temperature to rise again so that I can ride outside. Bigger image versions here in the photo album.

For the last 17 days, we have kept our friend’s dog named “Trails”. He’s a brittany spaniel and he is adorable. If only he did not pull so much when walking! We worked on that small issue for the last 2 weeks and he is better now, but it’s hard to be effective when walking 2 dogs at the same time.

Other than that, it went really well. Both dogs are behaving nicely together. They are playing a lot. The bed gets crowded in the morning though..

Our friends are about to get back in town and yesterday evening I decided to break out the flashes and umbrellas and try to snap a portrait or 2 with the help of Corinne. We only did a few ones with a single setup because it was quite late already when we got to it.

Trails was cooperating pretty well: that dog would do anything for a piece of food. Not so much luck with the poor Newton. He was simply terrorized by the umbrella I use to diffuse light. Can you tell? hehe!

Album below.

Trails in studio

I am finally done with processing all the pictures taken in France last march. Can you believe how long it took me! I really need to simplify my workflow given the lack of time I have for this. Maybe I’ll have to shoot ‘jpegs’ in the future. We’ll see..

Back on topic, I have updated the Paris online album with the latest pictures. They are miscellaneous pics taken walking in Paris that simply did not fit in the other albums.

I reached the downtown area using the most convenient transport system over there: the subway. I snapped a few shots but I was stopped quickly by a police woman: seems like taking pictures in the subway is not allowed.

Back on the surface, I just walked around randomly taking pictures along my way. Here is a HDR picture (processed from multiple exposures) that I really like even if I pushed the effect a bit too far compared to my usual taste:

Typical French architecture and coffee shops:

The ‘Hotel de ville’ (City Hall) and the ‘Centre Pompidou’ (national art museum):

Lugging around my full size tripod was a chore during the day, but I was really happy to have that night. I could capture some very nice and sharp night views of the city.

Pubs/restaurants:

These 2 are among my favorites of the night shots, I am just not sure which one I prefer. The amount of headlights tracks in the first one maybe a bit too distracting.

 A few more pics:

As usual, more pics and larger version in the album below:

Paris Misc

All pictures from the Paris trip are found in the ‘Paris March 2009′ album of the Travel Section in the photo album.

The Sacré-Cœur Basilica (Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) in Paris is located on the highest on the highest summit of the city, at the “Butte Montmartre”. The interior was really nice but picture taking was forbiden - and enforced

Skyline from up there:

The basilica

Some architectureal details:

Local performer trying so get a few $ from the tourist crowd…

More pics and larger versions in the album below.

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Paris Sacre-Coeur

Here is one more serie of pictures from my stop in Paris last march. Here are the pictures of  “Sainte-Chapelle” also located on the “île-de-France”. This is another example of French gothic architecture.

From Outside

Lower Chapelle

Upper Chapelle

More pictures and larger versions are in the album linked below.