Sky Train London Surrey Classic Final

This shot was taken on the Inaugural Prudential London Surrey Classic Pro Cycle Race on Sunday 4^th August. This was and will certainly be a high profile race for the future with a finish on the Mall. The shot was taken on the most southern part of the course at Walliswood Surrey which was also part of a 3 lap circuit of Leith Hill giving the chance to photograph the riders 3 times. Ben Swift was the best known rider in Sky's team for this race and he finished 10th.

I had only decided to go there on Saturday after realising that Sunday’s destination for my Club’s standard 60 mile bike ride was that day coincidentally only 8 miles short of the southern part of the race route. 4 club mates joined me to ride up there after lunch.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A550 with a Sigma 10-20mm zoom at 16mm. 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 using Detail Enhancer with natural settings

Photoshop

The crop tool was used to focus on the 5 Team Sky riders.

In Photoshop Topaz Clarity was used with landscape sunny preset to light up the scene better.

Topaz Adjust was used with a layer mask to bring more detail into the cyclists.

Levels were used to enhance

Brightness was increased overall.

Saturation blues was used to bring up the blues on the Sky Team Kit.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

Duplicate layer Noiseware Pro and standard sharpening with Unsharp mask.

Second duplicate layer with mask to apply extra sharpening and contrast with low amount and high radius using Unsharp mask (Clarity Effect) The settings were 41 amount and 41 radius. This effect was applied only to the riders for a final extra boost.

BEFORE AND AFTER

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

Original at 0EV

Sky Train London Surrey Classic Original

Tonemapped image

Sky Train London Surrey Classic Tonemapped

Final Image

Sky Train London Surrey Classic Final

For Licence and prints see Sky Train London Surrey Classic

Edwin Jones