It is time again for the Annual "Bike Week" here in Daytona Beach, Florida. This year we have over 600, 000 motorcycles in from all over the world, (yes, people from Europe and Asia charter jets just to bring and ride their motorcycles up and down Main Street), and at least half again that many people in town.

I usually work this with a motor driven SLR and a Leica M6 with a 35mm lens for up close. I decided this year to really try something different... Just an M6 with only a 90mm Elmarit M. This lens while optically great is not responsible for 15% of my shots most of the time. I hate using a rangefinder camera with a lens longer than 50mm, and I really never got comfortable with the 90mm lens. I figured that rather than just going to the event and being on auto-pilot, I would make myself as clumsy as I could be, and hopefully force myself to do something different.

I missed my SLR, I missed my wide-angle lens and I was sure that I was off on every shot as far as focus was concerned. Surprisingly, I didn't miss-focus much at all. There were some depth of field issues that would have been visualized better on an SLR, (photo BW-10), and I missed some perfect moments while trying to get that RF patch over the subject, and then recomposing on a moving subject, (the SLR wins here for me with the ability to focus anywhere on the screen), but those are the breaks. Anyhow, I did not attempt to do some fine art, or to create any single "stand-alone" masterpiece... I just went out and took some pictures in a dynamic environment. Take a look.

Bike Week- Daytona

BTW... I went back the next day after these were done and shot with only an SLR with a 105mm and 35mm lens. I forced myself to shoot only one lens per roll... no lens changing in mid-roll. That was an interesting way of working.

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), March 09, 2002

Answers

oops! That DOF issue was on photo BW 14, not BW 10.

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), March 09, 2002.

You're a braver man than I. The muscle bound guy in the picture fourth from the bottom doesn't appear appreciate his girfriend being photographed.

-- Ken Geter (kgeter@yahoo.com), March 09, 2002.

Ken, the real picture there isn't the girl... it is the guys behind her and the guy leaning over. Yes, the boyfriend was looking at me, but he missed the real brave guy... and looking at that boyfriend, that other guy is very lucky.

It was those guys in the background that made me take the picture.

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), March 09, 2002.

I photograph for Flying magazine. my favourite writer, Gordon Baxter, was admonished for his photographs of airplanes and women. his editor wrote 'Gordon, your airplanes pictures are great, but do not include women with boobs. they make your hands shake and your images unsharp'. Al, I see the same trend with your photographs.

-- daniel taylor (lightsmythe@agalis.net), March 10, 2002.

Al- Nice work. Who was it who said, "Every woman is an exhibitionist and every man is a voyeur"?!

-- Frank Horn (owlhoot45@hotmail.com), March 10, 2002.