Dirty Dishes
As planned, I didn’t ride, but spent the day photographing this year’s Dirty Dozen race.
This has already been the second-wettest year in Pittsburgh history-with more than a month left to overtake the all-time record!-and race day was commensurately rainy. I was glad not to be riding!
I played leapfrog with the nine separate groups of riders all day, hitting the five toughest hills: Logan (#5), Suffolk (#7), Canton (#9), Boustead (#10), and Eleanor (#12).
I was out from 10am to 5pm, and took about 350 shots. I weeded those down to 67 decent pics that I shared on my Flickr photostream. Then those got culled down to the ten that you see on this page.
When I asked for Inna’s help selecting the keepers, she made an interesting observation. Whereas I’d focused on close-ups to capture the pain and human drama of the ride, she was more interested in establishing shots that captured the ridiculous steepness of the hills. It was a good lesson to put more thought into thematic considerations next time I shoot an event.
But overall, given that I wasn’t riding, it was a pretty enjoyable way to spend the day, and I got to cheer on (and socialize with) a bunch of my riding buddies.
And despite standing around in the rain all day and walking several steep hills, it was a hell of a lot less painful than riding them all!
In addition to the following small selection, you can see my edited collection of 67 photos in my 2018 Dirty Dozen Flickr album.
View the Full Album