Bike Snob & San Jose Bike Party photos

Posted on June 19, 2010 by .
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Here’s a slide show of photos from Bike Snob NYC’s book signing and the San Jose Bike Party ride that followed last night. There’s an option to go full screen that works pretty well, in my opinion.

Most of these photos have captions that you can read by clicking through the set, if you’d like.

A shout out to Mr Mike Ahrens with his Wisecrack bottle openers, Slonie, Ahpook, Vigilant Velo, April from the publishing house, Eben (rhymes with “Evan”) Weiss (rhymes with “vice”) who talked about his visit to the Googleplex and correctly pointed out that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, Miguel, Gnat with the marvelous pink hair, Chris Matthews. Apologies to Kit, whose arm I twisted to show up and then I couldn’t find him although he was there.

A quick word about the Bike Party photos: Most of them were shot from a crazy rig I literally duct taped to the bike rack. A post stuck up about five feet, and on top of that I duct taped a camera tripod head to which I attached my DSLR. The camera faced to the rear, and I used a homebrew remote to trigger the shutter. The blurriness mostly comes from the PVC pipe I used for the tripod head mount, which swayed pretty crazily left and right. I used a piece of rope to keep fore & aft sway minimized. A potential enhancement is either to use a stiffer post (like a metal pipe), or use two PVC pipes to make a triangular mount that goes up from both sides of the rack.

Anyway, besides the side-to-side blurriness, I’m fairly pleased with how these turned out. In the past, I’ve stood in the middle of the road as the bike partiers whiz by me, but I get their motion blur with that, plus it’s a little dangerous. I’ve also tried standing to the side and pan, but those shots are uninteresting, IMO. I’d like to know what you think of getting these random facial shots like this. Does it work?

I think next time I’ll move the camera lower — maybe about chest level — to see how that works out.



See also:

  1. San Jose Bike Party photos
  2. San Jose Bike Party photos
  3. San Jose Bike Party Pirate Ride Preview
  4. San Jose Bike Party: Beach Party Ride!


  • Mnorri

    I thought I saw you and your camera rig out there. I was gonna say hey, but the light changed and things started moving.

    Try to limit the rotation of the camera, don't be overly concerned with translations of it. Lateral shifts don't cause nearly the blurring that rotations do. Good to see the experimentation!

  • biketurtle

    Instead of the duct tape, you could use a clamp like this one: http://www.adorama.com/LTPC.html. I have one and use is on many rides. It's rock solid and can support SLRs. Only downside is that it's a bit heavy.

  • Plumbandlevel

    I kinda like the blurriness-implies motion. Makes them look not “staged”. Real people really riding bikes. How can you miss?

  • bikesgonewild

    …kinda like the “action” quality of the fotos w/ a bit a' the blur…for real…

  • http://bicycledesign.net/ James@BicycleDesign

    Nice job, Richard. It looks like a good time and your photo set does a good job of capturing the fun.

  • http://cellowireless.blogspot.com rorowe

    The photos definitely capture the experience, blur or not! I'm glad you went into your camera rig in the post, too, as I've wanted to do point and shoot photography from my bike.

  • http://www.cyclelicio.us/ Cyclelicious

    Thanks Robert. Next I'm gonna try low and wide and see how that turns out.

  • http://www.cyclelicio.us/ Cyclelicious

    Glad you like, James. One thing I need to do is get a longer cable. Currently, it's so short I have to reach around behind me to push the remote trigger!

  • http://www.digitalclampmeter.net Digital Clamp Meter

    This is cool! And so interested! Are u have more posts like this? Plese tell me, thanks

  • Coco

    hi, here, today i got my jersey, it’s nice, perfect quality and cheap price, i give my friend as a gift, my friends very satisfaction, it’s really worth, if anyone want to buy cycling jersey, i suggest could go http://www.cycle-jersey.com.