I went to the 7th Annual North American Wife Carrying Championship at Sunday River Ski Resort, in Bethel, Maine. I shot photos of the event for the MaineToday.com Seen photoblog. I took my family with me and we had a blast.
First of all, the event itself is a riot. The race is a team sprint over a short obstacle course. The team consists of a man and a woman and one person carries the other. The man usually carries the woman, but I guess that is not required. The obstacles were a couple of logs and a water pit.
The prizes for the winners are pretty cool. You get your wife’s weight in beer, pepsi, granola bars etc. Plus, the winners got five times the wife’s weight in cash. I assume it’s in dollars not quarters or pennies or something. There is also up to $1000 allowance for travel to the international wife carrying championships.
The race is a spectacle, but it’s all part of a bigger Fall Festival. The day we were there, it was beautiful. The mountains were all in Autumn glory and the day was probably one of the last really warm days we’ll have this year. There were vendors, cookouts, and kids games sponsored by a local high school.
Allow for travel time
Unfortunately, I had also planned on shooting the Raging Bulls Championship play-offs at Fitzpatrick Stadium in Portland, Maine, the same day. I had not accounted for the amount of traffic that would be out “leaf peeping” on a Saturday. I should have known better, but I didn’t. Consequently, we got hung up in long lines of traffic on the way South and didn’t make it to the game.
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I stopped at Marginal Way Skate Park in Portland, Maine tonight before getting groceries. I got some photographs of some Freestyle BMX guys and some really exciting aggressive inline skating Rollerbladers.
I posted the pics of Marginal Way Skate Park to the MaineToday.com Seen photoblog.
Here are a couple of pictures, though.
Here is Ryan Strout, who is sponsored by ECS Hardware, showing some Mute Air. Ryan was getting some big air, I just wish the camera flash had filled him in more.
And here is Kent Dyer stalled on the fence above the quarter-pipe. He did this like 5 times so I could get the shot. This one came out great.
You can click the images for the fullsize version.
I hear Portland may be relocating the Skate Park to a new location. Wherever it goes, I hope there are no giant highway lightpoles in the background. Arrgh!
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Tom Noble sponsored the Eastern Fat Tire/Maine Mountain Biking Association Rotary Park Short Track at Rotary Park in Biddeford, Maine. The race benefits the Biddeford Parks and Recreation department. I got some shots of all three races and some pre-race stuff, too.
I posted most of the pics to MaineToday.com in the Seen section. You can go to the Rotary Park Short Track gallery.
I worked the area in the woods in an attempt to get interesting shots of the riders coming downhill. The downhill brought them to a tight, 90-degree turn where they lost all of their momentum.
That is Bradford Perley of Kennebunk. In that shot, I was shooting with my Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8 EX ASP lens, trying to get that “magazine cover” type shots with enough space around the rider for some type.
Here is another photo of Jeffrey Dixon of Windham. I was crouched in a pile of brush on a technical section of the track.
I shot that with my Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG AF. I had to shoot at ISO 800 to get the shot, but my shutter speed could be lower because the action wasn’t as fast here.
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The N.E.F.L. Southern Maine Raging Bulls played the North Shore Generals at Fitzpatrick Stadium in Portland, Maine, tonight. The Bulls pulled out a win.
I experienced the frustration of shooting sports under outdoors lighting at night. I was using my Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, which is pretty fast and gives me good quality. But the lights just weren’t bright enough, even at ISO 1600. A monopod may have helped.
The AI Servo was having trouble tracking the action with such a short telephoto. I really needed, like, a 300mm zoom. Something with image stablilization, too. I could have really used a couple extra f-stops.
I got some fair photographs from the game tonight. I uploaded them to MaineToday.com at http://seen.mainetoday.com/album.html?alb=858. I think I could have done a lot more with some more light. Maybe earlier in the season, when the sun was up longer. Otherwise, I need a longer lens with image stabilization.
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After attending the Portland Camera Club meeting lastnight, I was motivated to go try some night photography before going home. I went to Portland’s Wharf Street, which has a lot of character. I took my tripod, my remote shutter cable and my Sigma 12-24mm lens on the Canon EOS 10D body.
In the photo above, I was trying to get the street lamps vanishing into the distance, and the cool, overhead-lit door to my right. But, what I didn’t count on – and didn’t notice when I was on the street – is that the overhead light seems to be creating all these blue spots on the image.
Check this image below for a larger version showing the blue spots in the image above.
I did manage to get this photo, though. This one doesn’t have the benefit of the cool door with the overhead lighting, but at least it’s not covered in blue spots. 
You can click the thumbnail to see a larger version (600×900 pixels).
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I posted some new photographs around the web today, to photoSIG, flickr and MaineToday.com. As you can guess from the list of sites, it’s a variety of photographs.
The rose bush outside my house bloomed again and I took a few photos of it recently. I got a shot that I thought was pretty good and posted it to photoSIG.com. So far, I have received some really good feedback, already. If you have a photoSIG membership (basic is free), I’d like your comments.
I also went to Biddefords East Point Sactuary, this past week. I was taking photos of the surf crashing against the rocks, trying to capture the grandure of the rocky coast and the power of the water. It wasn’t working out that well, so I moved around trying to find smalling things to photograph. That’s when I noticed an interesting crack in the rocks with a circle in it. I tried a couple of compositions, and the one with the diagonal worked the best. But it still wasn’t really interesting. So I experimented with it and toned it blue. I liked it better than the original. I uploaded it to flickr. If you have a flickr account, you can view/download it there.
I went to Old Orchard Beach planning to take some photos of people with their motorcycles for MaineToday.com’s Seen Blog. When I got there, the Old Orchard Beach Bikefest at The Pier wasn’t in full swing, yet. But, the Towing and Recovery Association of Maine was having an event next to the Old Orchard Beach passenger train platform. There were lots of big shiny trucks and nice people. I uploaded the Towing and Recovery Association photos to the MaineToday.com Seen photo blog page.
I did manage to get a couple of shots of folks riding down the strip to the Old Orchard Beach Bikefest at The Pier. I posted those photos to the MaineToday.com Seen photo blog page. You can view the Old Orchard Beach Bikefest at The Pier album there.
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After watching the NASCAR Busch Series FoodCity 250 the night before, and swimming and wakeboarding on South Holston Lake in the morning, I went to the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series Sharpie 500 race on Saturday. We got there early and went to the exhibits outside the race.
The exhibits were really cool. I didn’t bring my whole camera bag because it was so heavy lug down the highway the night before, after the race. I decided to just bring the Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8 EX DG lens this time since it’s the most versatile. I was in the parking lot for about 5 minutes when I wished I had my wideangle Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG lens. Arrgh!
I do this all the time. No matter how many times I try to convince myself, I forget how important it is to have all my camera gear; usually faced with a long day of lugging a backpack full of gear around.
I did the best I could with what I had, though. I tried, mostly, to get the exhibit cars. It was a little tough with the usually-very-versatile Sigma 28-70mm. I had to think about angles and capture parts of the cars, mostly. This Compuware car was under a canopy and I had to shoot it at ISO 800 to get anything. I liked the details of the car, though.
The Lowes car was easy to get around, and out in the sun, but it was tough to get an angle that showed the car looking it’s best. In the end, I caught Larry Clarke, my host, in the frame.
The best exhibit has to go to Aarons Appliance. Nothing looked better than the “Dream Team.”
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I got to go to Eastern Tennessee and see some NASCAR at Bristol Motor Speedway. We were in town for both the Bush series FoodCity 250 and the NASCAR Sharpie 500. We got to stay with some fantastic people at the mountain-side home on South Holston Lake.
We flew in on Friday night and had just enough time to get settled before heading off to the race. Bristol is a mecca for race fans in August with fast and furious short track action under the lights. We weren’t disappointed; The FoodCity race had no less than 14 cautions – a tie for the record for this race.
Our seating was in one of the suites above the grandstands. The view was excellent and the service was great, too. A television broadcast the TNT coverage of the race into the suite so we could listen to the announcers and race analysis.
But, to experience the race, we had to go down to the mezzanine and stand in the crowd. I was standing in the crowd when the cars started, after the ceremonial and much anticipated, “Gentlemen, start your engines!” I was still standing in the crowd when the pace car left the track and the cars began racing. The sound of the cars was something I hadn’t expected. The roar was deafening. But it was more than that. The rumble could be felt in your chest. It was almost scary at first.
It was a long night and we had to get up the next day for some wakeboarding and more racing action.
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I went to Oxford Plains Speedway, in Oxford, Maine, to see the Boost/Rockstar Freestyle Motocross expo which was sponsored by Ken’s Yamaha. I took my camera and shot a lot of photos of people in the crowd for the MaineToday.com Seen blog. I spent a lot of time talking to people and taking their photos. It was a lot of fun and I got to talk to a lot of nice people.
The show was great. It started with Skydive New England making a pretty big entrance by skydiving into the stadium with the Metal Mulisha. The Mulisha opted to land on the grassy infield, while the Skydive NE folks landed right on the paved track. Wow.
The guys from Vertical Outlaws, a profesional streetbike freestyle team from Southern Maine, did a cool streetbike demo. From my vantage point, photos were difficult. I had to shoot through the fence around the track and opted to just watch the show.
The Freestyle Motocross was great. The tricks were awesome: Hart Attacks, Lazy Boy’s, Cliff Hangers, Rock Solid, inverted nac nac’s. Just crazy stuff. The step-up competition was a downer. The landing was pretty harsh, so after a bunch of tries, the riders agreed to split the prize money. Not very exciting, but I wouldn’t want to see anyone ruin their career or get an unnecessary injury over $1k.
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