Mark Cavendish Race to Victory Paris Final

Another image from the Tour de France in Paris last Sunday this one is focused on Mark Cavendish. The main interest on the day was Bradley Wiggins winning the Tour as the first British rider to do so in the 109 year history of the race. However the stage was also the fourth win on the Champs Elysées by Mark Cavendish and in the Rainbow Jersey of World Champion

The picture was taken with a Gorillapod, a flexible small tripod which has bendy leg sections to wrap around things like lampposts and railings. An ordinary tripod would not be possible in the crowd. The object was to fire off 2 cameras at once when the race arrived. This was taken with a Sony A550 with a Sigma 28-200 zoom at 55mm. I used ISO 400 to gain a high shutter speed of 1/1250^th second. The image was opened in Camera Raw and 2 additional images were created at +2EV and -2Ev for a “false HDR” with each image having Noiseware Pro applied.  A Photoshop action I had saved was used to create the extra images automatically. The images were saved as tiffs.  

Photomatix

Outputted in Photomatix to detail enhancer. Click the Camera name top right on flickr for this image for Exif details and the settings used.

Photoshop

In Photoshop rather than a pan blur a Zoom Blur was used through Topaz lens effects. A layer mask was used to remove the blur from Mark and partly from the other cyclists to make them stand out.

The Zoom layer was duplicated and then sharpen Unsharp mask was used to enhance the zoom lines

Next Topaz Adjust was used with Vibrance group of presets and clarity preset. A slight vignette was added in Topaz.

Levels and curves to enhance.

Vibrance plus 16 points.

Extra brightness with layer mask to exclude highlights

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

Unsharp Mask 50 amount 50 radius, clarity effect. A black layer mask was applied to this and the effect then only applied to Mark and his bike to make him stand out more.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original image. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result after zoom blur and adjustments.

Original at 0EV

Mark Cavendish Race to Victory Paris Original

Tonemapped image Detail Enhancer

Mark Cavendish Race to Victory Paris Tonemapped

Final Image

Mark Cavendish Race to Victory Paris Final

Edwin Jones