pixelatedreality

My Tri club organised a race in August, this is the second time. It’s a city circuit in Stockholm, passing some nice, scenic, parts of town. Olympic distance, and various shorter sprints.

I decided to try make something out of the bike part. I started at the south ramp of Västerbron, where there is a short but rather steep hill that resulted in good photos last year. But they had changed the layout of the spectator area from last year, so there was no good angles to take pictures. So I decided to try outside Grand Hotell since there are some 90 degree turns.

With the low sun it came out fairly good. Unfortunately I missed the elite riders while looking for a good photo spot. I have to start earlier next year!

More photos here!

Another weekend paddling white water. Two rapids, the wave at Brattland and creeking in Vålån.

We arrived late, and some decided to do some night kayaking which turned out to be quite photogenic in the summer night light. That’s one of the few big advantages living a bit up north, the summer nights really never gets dark.

Saturday afternoon there was a competition, Master of the Wave. Simple rules: 1. The one who stays last on the wave after the time is out wins. 2. No fighting with the paddles or ripping off the spraydeck. All else fair…

Then we did some creeking too.

More photos here.

For quite some time me and a friend has talked about learning white water kayaking. An opportunity presented itself and off we went. Turned out to be very difficult, but loads of fun. Will be a while until I reach the level of the people in the photos!

Photos taken at Björbo and Kärringforsen, Sweden.

All photos here.

Stockholm’s Ström is a really nice place for white water kayaking. The piece of water connects Lake Mälaren with the Baltic. The water flow is regulated, and the conditions is regulated by how much water is let through.  In the pictures the gate is set at about 1m below the Lake Mälaren water level, giving a flow of 100 m3ps, and forming a wave train that is surfable.

I experimented with slow shutter times to get a feeling of a flowing mass of water. Works OK here since the kayaks are semi-stationary surfing the wave. The image stabilization on the lens helped a lot to get the non-moving parts (relatively) sharp.

More photos here.

I decided to brush up my French and went on a four week course to Biarritz. The plan was to learn to surf at the same time, and of course try to get some action photos while at it.

Unfortunately I crashed with my mountainbike the first weekend and ripped several tendons in my shoulder. So I was left with studying French and just barely able to hold the camera.

After a couple of tries I realised several things had to come together to get good photos. Low tide, outside school hours, sun, favorable winds and of course waves. I walked out as far as I could, with water to my thighs. I saw several other standing back on the beach taking photos, but I felt getting closer gave me better angles.

More photos here.