Sports Photo of the Day

Since I am going to my first supercross in a while tonight I thought today’s sports picture could at least have a rider in it. I took this just after the main at Red Bud in 2007. Ricky Carmichael was one of the best if not the best rider that I have ever seen. I started watching racing during the reign of Jeremy McGrath. McGrath dominated the sport at the time. Who could be better than that? Ricky could. His nickname was the Goat. You would think that it was a bad thing, but it actually stood for Greatest of All Time. He really took over the sport, and the only thing that could slow him down was injury. In 2007 when this picture was taken Ricky was running a very limited outdoor schedule while pursuing a stock car career. The new up and comer was James Stewart who appeared to have Ricky bested on the day. That was not to be, and Ricky could walk away from Red Bud one last time as the champion. He stopped right in front of us to salute the crowd, and I was lucky enough to get this picture.

Technical Data

This shot is always one that I have liked, but the shadow on his face kept it from being great in my mind. I started off processing this photo by trying to get rid of that. As it turns out the only good way to avoid the shadow was to be in a different spot. Anything that I did in Lightroom looked too fake. I decided to try out a couple of filters in a couple of plug ins to see what they could do for me. By accident I stumbled across the Kryptonite filter in Perfect Effects 4 by On One Software. It really gave the photo a cool look that I really liked. I sent the photo back to Lightroom to do a couple of things to it. I really wanted some more texture on the bike so I used the brush in Lightroom and added some clarity to Ricky’s suit and the bike. I think that it makes it pop even more that way. From there though I was done. I think that I found a new preset that I really like, and made this picture one that could finally make the blog.