This weekend round 8 of the Monster Energy CMRC Canadian Motocross Nationals took place at Sand Del Lee.  This legendary track is located just outside of my hometown of Ottawa, Ontario.  Sand Del Lee was where I shot my first MX race and it’s one of my favourite tracks to shoot on the Canadian circuit.

My summers are pretty crazy and I am typically booked solid from March through October.  I haven’t taken a vacation in over three years and decided to take the week off between the SDL and Walton nationals.  My wife’s family’s cottage, where I would be staying, is near SDL and I thought this would allow me to make the most of my time with family while still being able to cover these two awesome races.   I had a big mountain bike festival to shoot this weekend for www.ridingfeelsgood.com as well but handed it off to one of my staff photographers so that I could cover SDL.  I’ve had to handoff quite a few gigs this summer as I have simply been spread too thin and can’t cover all the MTB and MX events I am asked to photograph during our action packed Canadian summers.  The cottage’s proximity to the race was great but I knew that not having internet access would leave me driving around nearby towns poaching ghetto wi-fi trying to get these reports up and images out.  I hoped to use my iPhone as a wi-fi hotspot but I couldn’t even get a decent 3G signal to work off.  That made getting even a small zipped batch of images up a challenge.  So far I have had to work each day but I am hoping to put an end to that after I post this report.

I recently picked up a sweet 15.5″ Retina Macbook Pro, fully-loaded with 16GB ram, an 800GB SSD, Thunderbolt, USB 3.0 and all the bells and whistles a nerd like me could ever want.  My new D4 uses the new XQD flash cards and they are blistering fast.  These cards are nice for cranking out a 200 raw image burst, should you ever need to do that, but for me the real plus was the huge time savings that could be had with the cards and a new USB 3.0 card reader.  I have seriously cut my workflow down by more than half with this new setup.  I shoot to the XQD cards and ingest with a USB 3.0 reader straight to my MacBook Pro while simultaneously making a copy to an external SSD drive.  In my tests, I was able to ingest 200 images (4gb) in 1.13 min. For shoots like this where I am capturing 3000 plus pics, this is a huge time saver.  I also picked up a USB 3.0 reader for my old CF cards, which my trusty D3 still uses.  This was my first big shoot with the new setup and so far I am very impressed.  I am not a Mac guy and have always done my big boy work on my PCs but I have to say that, this thing hums.  I even notice it to be snappier in Lightroom when loading previews and cycling through images.   Once a Thunderbolt reader and PC interface is ready I will be getting pics in and out to clients like never before.  Good times to be a sports shooter on the road.  FastTimes just got a little faster I am still getting used to the insane Retina display so please excuse any colour shifts until I get it dialled.   If you notice something is way green or magenta please drop me a line.  Thanks!

Part of the magic of Sand Del Lee is the Medaglias: Tyler and Jeremy.  This is their home track (even though Tyler races for GRR) and the fans always get behind them big time.  They typically do well here and it’s great to see and hear the crowd cheer them on.  I’ve shot quite a bit with them and they are two of my favourite riders.  Tyler is out right now with a broken leg but we’re all hoping he recovers quickly and is able to represent us at Motocross Des Nations in Belgium later this year.  Jeremy won both his motos and did not disappoint.

SDL is a decent size track which offers some nice shooting opportunities.  The light was nice in the morning and I made a point of getting out and trying some exposures in the back sections of the track.  I got some of my favourite shots at SDL last year and was hoping to crank out a few bangers this year as well.

The region had not seen rain in weeks leading up to the race but severe thunderstorms were forecasted as the race grew closer.  I packed my rain gear but hoped I wouldn’t need it.  A few rain clouds rolled in and out throughout the day but it was a decent day to shoot as a whole.  The sky was a mix of dark rain clouds and blue bird all at once.  High winds kept me and the camera guessing with exposures varying up to four stops, sometimes as quickly as between consecutive riders.  Luckily, key areas like the start/finish and podium had decent light all day.

I shot with my usual two body setup (D4 & D3) and tried to find some interesting angles to shoot.  There were no really ‘killer’ berms or jumps but there are several nice scrub shots on this track.  The race was very well attended so I tried to incorporate the crowd as much as I could.  A lot of the shots I liked had porta-potties, RVs or scissor lifts in the background which makes it next to impossible to isolate the action and get a clean shot.  I used my speedlights to deal with backlit shots but even they can’t clean up a cluttered background.  Here are a few pics from my day at SDL.

This report goes out to Gauldy.  This guy inspires me and that’s not something I take for granted.  His passion is infectious and he works his tail off on race day; tweeting, filming, MCing, popping in on radio with Koster and doing interviews and colour for TV.   Ryan is the real deal and deserves some props.  Thanks for everything you do buds!

This report goes out to Gauldy.  This guy inspires me and that’s not something I take for granted.  His passion is infectious and he works his tail off on race day; tweeting, filming, MCing, popping in on radio with Koster and doing interviews and colour for TV.   Ryan is the real deal and deserves some props.  Thanks for everything you do buds!

See you all in Walton.