Went to the UCD mountain bike race at Bogg’s State Forest. Such a great place to ride, camp, and just… be. I have a great time taking pictures there. Erica went with me and was a great photo assistant and two-footed light stand. The picture above, and lots others like it, was possible partly because she did a great job panning the flash she was holding. With her holding the flash, about 90% of the shots came out well… If it had been on a light stand, it would have been much harder to get consistent results. I had my 580ex on my camera, and she was holding the Vivitar 285.

Lessons learned, areas for improvement: My new Turbo 2×2 battery pack was fantastic. Shot all weekend long, 800 or so images, most with flash, and the pack was only 1/4 drained! SO much better than the canon EP4 pack (the one I had to send back TWICE for replacement). It would have been nice to have a battery pack for the second flash though - it couldn’t keep up with the 580ex w/ pack…

At the first location, I struggled to find a good spot - I went back and forth from sun to partial sun/shade, and finally moved into the shade, which was the right thing to do - shooting in the shade gave me full control of the lighting with flash.