Ontic Oren

This weekend was the kickoff for the Amgen Tour of California. I’m lucky enough to live <1 mile from the start line of the Prologue and took advantage of the situation to take a few pictures. The prologue is a 2.1 mile time trial through downtown Palo Alto and Stanford. They riders had a mostly straight route, with two turns at the beginning and a 180 sweeper at the end. They ride alone, one every minute. The course is ~ 4 min total.

I arrived an hour before the start, and positioned myself right at the exit of the second turn. The corner was in shade, with great even light even at 1pm in the afternoon. I set the shutter to 1/200 sec in the hope of some motion blur, and tried my hand at panning. I used a polarizer later in the data as a ND filter to keep the aperature open and help blur the background. Pictures link to larger versions and the full gallery.