In 2007, I wanted to witness this annual cycling race at it's final stage in Kuala Lumpur but something came up and I had to miss it. This year, 2008, I made sure that I would not miss it.
Instead of driving to KL town, I decided to take the LRT from Bukit Jalil station and disembark at the Masjid Jamek station, which is just a few minutes walk to Dataran Merdeka, where the race begins and ends. It was a carnival atmosphere at the venue and it was a sunny day!

An impressive fleet of police rider motorbikes. The bright green jackets stands out well.	The cavalcade departs.
Other vehicles of the cavalcade carrying various race officials.	These are the marshalls all wired up with radio communications

Honestly, it was my very first experience seeing the cycling race live and what more trying to record the event with my camera. I had printed out the route and the itinery of the KL stage but there was one particular word which I just could not figure out, 'cavalcade'. Now I understand, 'cavalcade' is actually the group of vehicles that consists of race officials. Before the start of the race, the 'cavalcade' will actually take the route once thru. I guess, as it goes round, the various officials in the check points will station themselves.

The flag off	A close up during flag off
Doing the first turn after flag off	Spare bikes all set, just in case.
A huge number of photographers seized the opportunity to practice their photographic skills.	Even those with simple cameras and camera-phones would not want to miss capturing this special event.

Anyway, in capturing photographs of a cycling race, we are talking about fast action or speed. So, how do you show speed? Here are some samples of how we can express speed.

One way of showing motion is tto use a slow shutter speed. This will cause the objects that's moving to be blur (a sense of motion). This was taken at 1/60s. If the speed was even slower, ghostly effect will be even more apparent.	Panning will give the opposite effect, ie. the camera is following the object and hence the background will be blur.
This is a similar shot as the above, just that it was taken at a very low angle and using a wider lens.	Another shot, captured at the same level as the cyclist but with a slow shutter speed

As I said earlier, it was my first experience in a cycling race. I was very amazed at the strength of the wind as the cyclers past us. That just shows how fast they were moving. Hence, to freeze a cylist, you will need to have a shutter speed of at least 1/800s. Of course it also depends whether you are taking from the front or side angle.

This shot was taken from the front angle.	This shot was taken from a 45 degreen angle
This is another shot taken as the cyclist moves away from the camera.	This shot was taken when the cyclist was negotiating a curb and taken from a low angle.

Other than showing motion and playing with different angles. It is also interesting to capture the face expression of the cyclist as they sweat it out to compete. I knew that I was going to be pretty close to the cyclist but I did not know that I was going to be so near that you actually can touch them. So, to capture a close up shot is not too dificult, you just need to have an extremely fast shutter speed. Here are some close up shots which could be better if I had a better telephoto lens.

This shot has the cyclist (object) sharp and the background blur. It also captured the expression of the cyclist. It would have been even better if the background was blurer. To achieve that, DOF has to be shallower, in other words use a bigger aperture.	An eye level front angle and it feels like the cyclist is crashing on you. Look at the expression on their faces.
Another front angle shot but at closeup. Observe that this shot has an even shallower DOF compared to the top photo. Remember, the longer the telephoto, the DOF gets shallower.

In situations where things move fast, focussing becomes a challenge, especially when you try to zoom in. As you know when it is wide angle, the DOF is greater and hence the 'out of focus' error may not be so apparent. With the advent of technology, our lenses are autofocus and this helps a lot. Again, some cameras do not have a very fast focusing and this will cause the camera to be capturing the wrong object. It is good that there are 11 lapse, though 1 lap takes only about 5-8 minutes, at least it gives you a chance to think and try again.

Observe where the focusing point is. Looks like the subject is to be the cyclist in front but due to the speed, the camera captured the back cyclist instead.	This is zoomed in and hence the DOF is very shallow. The focusing point is in the middle.
This shot shows a cyclists behind blurred and trailing the front cyclist.	This shot would have been more interesting if the the slope was more steep.

About 60% thru the race, dark clouds began to cover the sun and I had no choice but to use a higher ISO to compensate for the poor lighting condition in order to keep up with a high shutter speed.

I truly enjoyed myself and it was a great experience. When Le Tour De Langkawi comes again next year, I would probably position myself somewhere where I can capture the cyclist with a good background / landmark of Kuala Lumpur.