Colonnade Photos

BBTC held a special fundraising event at Colonnade this past Wednesday to show off the park, generate some extra interest, and to hopefully encourage some checkbooks to open. Most of the Board was there, as well as the org's new Executive Director, John Lang, and quite a few supporters I haven't seen in a while. I'm guessing the donation I made this spring landed me on the invite list. They had some pizza and drinks available and russled up a few dirt-jump guys to demo the big gap jump and show the rest of us how it's done. Mike Westra, the Project Manager for BBTC, gave a walking tour of the beginner section, the intermediate area, and then finally to the phase 2 freeride section.

I brought my singlespeed to dink around on the "limestone loop" and the teeter-totters and some of the skinnies and pump track, but also brought my camera to get some shots of the guys going big. It's been too long since I used my SLR and I had to get back in the proper frame of mind to use it, but I ultimately got a few good shots. I spent a while under the gap jump taking shots of the guys soaring over me, but even the best of those shots weren't really interesting to look at.

Shooting at Colonnade is a bit of a challenge because of the dust, the shadows, and the bright light in the background. Not to mention the speed of the subjects. I had my external flash with me and was primarily shooting 1/250, f2.8 at ISO 200. I absolutely hate using faster ISO speeds because of the noise (yes, even a problem with digital) but in hindsight I should have at least bumped it to 400 and stopped it down a bit. Like I said, it's been a while...

Here's my 5 favorite shots from Wednesday. Click to enlarge.