Part - 2 Part - 3 Part - 4 Part - 2 Part - 3 Part - 4
Note: The thumbnails are clipped in many instances and are only meant to give you an idea of what is in the actual photo. Clicking on some photos will reveal much more. There seems to be a redundant amount of photos at times, but some photos were too fabulous to leave out and others like with Stevens above is also about riders in the background, so you get two for one at times!The TTT, known as the Team Time Trial was held in overcast conditions, but that's ok because it wasn't really cold, and obviously those conditions provided perfect lighting and color contrasts for those action shots, (See Gallery above). There's not much to say really, I'll let the photos do the talking. Even Team Captain Ina Teutenberg didn't have much to say, other then there was little wind, and not enough teams to contest this course. Since it's the first edition, its unclear if the event will grow or disappear. I'm sure the riders love the course since its very smooth pavement all the way up and back to the finish line. I'm betting these are the best TTT photos ever taken of HTC, and by far this was the best day ever working with the camera. That's primary due to good results in the photo lab, and thanks to Doug's son for taking me out in the media car!
This is the first time that I took the pains to work with 4 different software programs of the highest quality available today. The final complete galley is much better then the highlights originally posted here. Actually the sharpest photos are the latter parts of the gallery, but all of them turned out very nice. I spent at least 16 hours, or two days working with these photos because I felt that they were well worth it. I believe these photos will stand the test of time.
While these are the best I have ever shot personally, I spent quite a bit of time last year learning new highly sophisticated graphic software programs which I combined in a 4 step process to obtain the final polished photos in this gallery. While the 48 bit tiffs were reduced to 24 bit jpg at the very end, the final jpg is not only of the finest quality, but the actual file size was keep to a minimum while preserving stunning quality in these images.
This is my salute to HTC this year. Enjoy!
Cheers!
Note: To do justice to viewing these images, you really need a sharp color monitor like some sort of IPS varient, not a cheap TN panel. My report on the Dell Ultrasharp 2209wa is still here. Also I typically set the contrast on my 2209wa monitor very low since it's so bright out of the box. For viewing I use 40 brightness and 30 contrast. However for the photo work I have to raise it up to 40/40 so that the final image is suitable across all platforms. The public library around here uses Dell Ultrasharps, and although they are not top quality, the default settings they use are good to judge what most people are seeing across America and the whole world for that matter. If the images appear to bright or dark, adjust your settings accordingly.
Photos best displayed at 100 percent or less is ok. More the 100 percent zoom creates artifact and noise! FireFox will resize inside a framed window automatically. In IE, you would need to decrease the percentage to fit the window if needed on smaller displays.