May’s hi-res desktop wallpaper calendar from PHOTO.GP features Marc Marquez’ first premier class victory at CotA.

It took him only two attempts to win for the first time in the top MotoGP class, and here he is mid-celebration in Parc Fermé.

To download the 1920-pixel wide jpg, just click on the image above!

This calendar is also available in Euro-format, with weeks starting on Monday instead of Sunday. To download this version, just click here.

If you enjoy free content like this, get email updates in our Newsletter to make sure you don’t miss a thing!

Here’s a special item indeed: when Cal Crutchlow singed custom order prints for PHOTO.GP back in February, I asked him to sign a print of one of his greatest rides ever. At Silverstone in 2012, he fractured his ankle on Saturday morning and was in danger of missing his second home GP in a row. He’d even had a special edition helmet made, with the Union Jack beneath his trademark yellow flames.

Cal dodged the local medical examiners to try his luck in the morning warm-up session. You might remember this shot of him wincing as he mounted to bike. He felt he could ride in the race, and went on to start from the back of the grid. He moved through the pack and finished in an incredible sixth place, thrilling the British fans and impressing those of us who heard the backstory of his having done the thing with a broken ankle.

So here is one of my favorite shots from the weekend, which shows Cal coming through the final turn, intense eyes looking through the corner. This is a 24×16″ Giclée canvas print, mounted on Styrene, and signed by Cal as shown above.

This is not a limited edition, it is a single print, one copy only. To purchase, please use the button below.

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Ship to U.S. California Address $542.03 USD Ship to U.S. Address $495.00 USD Ship to Canada Address $515.00 USD Ship to All Other Addresses $540.00 USD

Facebook connection George Niaounakis sent me this question, and I thought it was interesting enough to answer in a blog post. He has kindly given me permission to do so. Thanks, George!

“I am still in the very early stages of photography – I have a day job and for sure I don’t know if photography, especially in Greece, will provide me with an income big enough to be my only job. The only thing that I know for sure is that it makes me smile a lot!!

“I currently own a canon 7d and a 70-200 f4 IS. I am thinking of buying an 70-200 f2.8 (in order to have the ability to use it also with an 2x extender), a full frame dslr & a big zoom lens. My concern is the following: Should I get a great dslr and a modest lens or the other way around, for example an 5d Mark III + 300mm f/2.8 or a 1dx + 400mm f/5.6?”

How great to have to find a solution to this problem! 10k euros to spend, but how to do so… Please take what you read below as one photographer’s opinion and nothing more. I expect many would disagree with much of what I’m about to say. But since you asked me, here is what I think.

I’m going to assume first that the money in question must be spent on gear, and isn’t available for other things that might be of greater help to you than new equipment. If the offer were: Here’s 10k to spend on exploring photography and improving your skills, I would probably advise that only a portion of it be spent on gear, and the rest be used to create opportunities to practice and experiment with the type of photography that interests you.

But as far as the body-lens dilemma, let’s consider one aspect at a time. You already have quite a good camera body in the 7D. (As a Nikon shooter, I’m not hands-on familiar with the Canon bodies, but I have seen fantastic work produced with the 7D and believe it’s a great piece of kit.) Before I switched to Nikon, I used the 70-200 f/4 quite a bit and found it a fantastic lens, with several advantages over the f/2.8 IS version which I owned at the time. I have also used teleconverters with 70-200mm lenses, both Canon and Nikon.

Many of my colleagues use teleconverters, especially the 1.4x versions, and get good results. I have not had the same experience, and recently sold my last teleconverter. I no longer use them because the results I got were not acceptable to me. So for me, the ability to use a teleconverter is not a good reason to pick a specific lens over another, especially with a zoom lens such as the 70-200.

For motorsports, the f/4 version of a 70-200mm zoom is not a bad choice, as you are usually working in the day time with plenty of light. If you get into pit lane and want to do portraits, f/4 is still a workable aperture for shallow depth of field. Given that you already own this lens, I’d be tempted to save money by keeping it rather than upgrading to the larger, heavier, and much more expensive f/2.8 version.

But the part of your question that really interest me is this: “Should I get a great dslr and a modest lens or the other way around?” Again, being a Nikon guy I have not used the Mark III or the 1Dx, but I have used bodies in Nikon’s lineup that are similar to each of these Canon models and will base my comments on that experience.

Usually when I hear a question like this, the asker has less money to work with and has to decide between a first rate lens with a consumer grade camera body vs. a pretty good lens and a ‘pro-sumer’ camera body. In this case I almost always recommend spending the bulk of the money on the lens rather than the camera, because in my experience the difference between a pro lens and an inexpensive version is of greater value than the difference between a consumer and a pro-sumer camera body.

But with 10k to spend, you have many more possibilities and thus the question becomes more interesting. 1Dx vs. 5d III in my mind is similar to D4 vs. D600 or D800. (If anyone feels compelled to point out below all the reasons why this is wrong, please do so on your own website, thanks. For this discussion the similarities are close enough.) By making motor sports your subject, the choice is even more complex. For landscape work, I’d have a different response to this question, for example.

In fact, for each of my photographic subjects that wasn’t motor sports, I’d recommend putting most of the budget into the lens choice. Modest cameras are so good these days, they can handle portraiture, nature, travel, etc very well. Recently I used a Nikon D5100 with its kit lens to shoot a friend’s portrait and was very pleased with the results. With a pro lens, I believe that this modest camera would produce excellent images of many subjects. But I wouldn’t use it for MotoGP.

At this point I must further refine my discussion to separate MotoGP from ‘motor sports.’ I have photographed many levels of motorcycle racing as well as several classes of car racing. I have found MotoGP to be much more challenging than any other type of photography I’ve tried.

The combination of the speed of the bikes and their size as you track them over long run off areas means you’re trying to photograph small, quickly moving objects, often at a great distance. Cars are much larger subjects and, in my opinion, are easier for the photographer and camera technology to handle. Slower motorcycles are much easier than MotoGP. Shooting an electric motorbike race is a piece of cake by comparison.

Given the difficulty inherent in this subject, the best camera body you can afford is a great benefit. The quality of the lens is not less important, but I think that the quality of the camera body is much more important.

I’m confident in this opinion because I have photographed motorcycle racing with the Canon 30D, 40D, and 1D MkII, and the Nikon D300, D300S, D700, D600, D800, D3, D3X, and D4. That’s a pretty broad range. While I got acceptable results with each body, there is simply no comparison is success rate between, say, the D4 and the D300. And there shouldn’t be, right? Otherwise why would you pay 3-4 times as much for the D4? It had better be more capable in challenging situations!

And it is. I tried the D800 as a loaner from NPS at Phillip Island last season, and while I found a lot to like about it, to me it’s not nearly as good a body for MotoGP as the D4, or the D3, or for my money even the D700, which was basically a D3 with some missing bells and whistles. For other types of subjects, I believe the D800 is a gorgeous camera and would love to have one for landscape work. But I was very glad for the chance to try one at PI, because I learned that I was better off spending the extra money on a D4 when it came time to add another body to my kit.

What’s the difference? The most noticeable thing to me has been the speed with which the different camera bodies can focus and track small subjects that accelerate and decelerate as quickly as MotoGP bikes. It’s not Frames per Second that I care about (I rarely shoot at the D4′s maximum frame rate of 11 FPS) as much as how quickly and accurately the camera works as I try to track my subject.

So to return to your question, George, my advice is this: if MotoGP is what you want to excel at, get as good a primary camera body as you can, and with whatever is left over, get as good a lens as possible. I don’t know how much a 1Dx costs in Greece, and I’m afraid to ask, frankly. In the US it’s just under $7k. But if you could pick up a good, used 1d Mark IV, perhaps even a Mark III (I see one here used for $1250!!), that is something I would consider. That would give you a really good body, suited to racing, and leave more money left over for lens options. I do not mean to disparage the 5d III. I think the 5Ds, from the very first one, are fantastic cameras. I only mean that for motorcycle racing, a good 1D is a better choice.

If by motor sports you mean cars or a local series of motorcycles, I’d less strongly advise in this direction. I know a successful American Le Mans Series pro who shoots everything on Canon 60D bodies. Before that he used only 50Ds, and before that 40Ds. Those cameras (and his experience and skill, admittedly both greater than mine) handle the big ALMS cars just fine. The last time I shot ALMS, I found little difference in the performance between a D300 and a D700. But again, for MotoGP, big difference! At least for me.

UPDATE 2013-04-15: I’m very pleased to announce that Kerry has joined PHOTO.GP as our latest Intern!

In addition to being a long-time MotoGP fan, she is fluent in English, Spanish, Italian and French, and has years of experience working with the Jorge Lorenzo Offical Fan Club. She will be helping with our Facebook and Google+ content, and perhaps a few other surprises coming up soon.

I’d like to thank everyone who inquired about the position. I’m frankly overwhelmed by the interest and by how many talented people wanted to be involved here at PHOTO.GP. I’m just sorry I can’t take on a huge staff with all of you! Thanks again for responding to my call, and I wish you all luck in finding new opportunities in the future.

—

From Wikipedia:

“…an internship consists of an exchange of services for experience between the student and an organization. Students can also use an internship to determine if they have an interest in a particular career, create a network of contacts, or gain school credit. Some interns find permanent, paid employment with the organizations with which they interned. This can be a significant benefit to the employer as experienced interns often need little or no training when they begin regular employment. Unlike a trainee program, however, employment at the completion of an internship is not guaranteed.“

What’s the deal?

With the above definition of an Intern in mind, I’m looking for someone to trade help with managing my PHOTO.GP Facebook and Google+ content for experience gained from seeing how my photography business works. I do not intend this to be an unpaid internship, but it’s not a well-paid one, either. I don’t do motorcycle racing photography to get rich. I do it because I love photography and I love motorcycle racing and it’s a dream come true to be able to work in MotoGP. I’m looking for someone who shares those passions, is interested to see what it’s like to work in this world, and who will enjoy helping me bring my photography to thousands of fans.

The main activity is simply posting photographs from the archive at www.photo.gp to the PHOTO.GP Facebook and Google+ pages. We will work out a schedule that suits my needs and your availability. It’s very flexible and can be done from anywhere in the world. There is no age limit, young or old. I use Dropbox to make the chosen images available, and the intern will become a PHOTO.GP admin both on Facebook and Google+.

We will also be working together to pick the content to add, and for this reason, familiarity with MotoGP and WSBK is required. I know that many of you who saw me mention this opportunity on Twitter or Facebook have that knowledge. If you are also known to me personally or through social media and I have some sense of your deportment and personality, that is a plus. But it’s not necessary. I’m willing to be convinced (by a compelling, professional email and follow up phone or Skype chat) to give someone a chance about whom I currently have no awareness whatsoever.

Now that you know what you, if chosen, will be doing, let me state up front what you won’t be doing: You will not be issued a credential or find yourself photographing sports events with me or on my behalf. You will not be sitting in the media center or wandering around the paddock with me or on my behalf. For the time being, at least, this opportunity is only about keeping the PHOTO.GP presence on Facebook and Google+ current.

Why is this opportunity happening?

When I was in college I did an internship with a PR firm and it was a fantastic experience. It paid the minimum wage, but I learned a lot, met some amazing people, and had a great time basically volunteering my services in exchange for the knowledge and connections.

I’m now in a position to offer someone else a similar opportunity. I expect it to be fun for both of us, to reduce my workload a bit, and to give someone some experience with how a small business works.

What you bring to the role.

Good command of English is required. Sometimes I write the remarks that accompany an image, but sometimes you will and I want to know that I don’t need to proofread each and every post. Good Spanish, and or Italian, automatically moves you to the top of the list of consideration. In fact, a native Spanish or Italian speaker with decent English… whoa. My heart is racing at the very thought.

As stated above, familiarity with MotoGP and WSBK is necessary. My last assistant was earnest but didn’t know Rossi from Petrucci, and thus didn’t understand how a casual remark above a given photo might unleash a fanboy vs hater flame war.

Familiarity with Facebook and Google+ is also desired, at the very least the ability to attach a photo from your computer, type a grammatically correct statement into the text box, and align the mouse over the Post box before clicking. Beyond that basic level of competence, even better would be keeping a keen eye on the news in order to judge when a photo of a given rider might particularly catch the interest of those who follow what we’re doing.

Compensation

I’ve already had offers to take on this role for free. However, I like to be paid for my work, and I like to pay something, even if it isn’t much, to those who help me. So up front I’ll say that while this isn’t a high-paying gig by any means, I don’t expect you to work for free even if you’re willing to do so.

In addition to some pittance per hour being part of the arrangement, there is also the opportunity to take compensation in trade. I assume many, if not most, who are interested in this role like my photography well enough, so I can offer prints of my work in lieu of or in addition to a wage depending on the situation. As you may know, I am working with certain MotoGP riders on signed editions and custom signed prints, so another possible compensation is a print signed to you by one of the riders, or even a print among the limited editions available from PHOTO.GP. These considerations are all in addition to (now harking back on the above Wikipedia content) whatever value you may place on gaining an insider’s view of how PHOTO.GP works.

How to Apply

Please send an email to this address: intern at photo.gp Explain briefly why you’re interested and how you fit into the What you bring to the role section above. No need to attach a resumé unless you want to. The deadline for applications is end of day Saturday, April 13th, PST.

I will acknowledge receipt of each inquiry so that you know I received yours. But I expect a fair number of emails and will not reply again to each one explaining why I didn’t pick you. If you don’t hear from me by end of day Sunday, April 14th, sorry, but you weren’t selected.

Thanks for your interest, and I look forward to hearing from you!

Scott

When I use a flash in pit lane, I set it to Rear Shutter, which means that the flash fires just as the shutter closes. For long exposures this is the only setting I use because if the flash fires when the shutter opens, movement in the image appears to be moving backwards.

Last night in pit lane I photographed Jorge Lorenzo riding away from his box. As he did so he passed in front of his pit board, which of course has his logo of the red X inside the white arrowed circle.

This logo is know as Por Fuera, which means something like ‘on the outside’ in Spanish. The story goes back to Lorenzo’s first GP victory in Brazil, 2003, when he passed a couple of youngsters named Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa by riding around them on the outside, por fuera. The red X is the ‘por’ the white circle with the arrow on the end is the ‘fuera.’

This image was shot at 1/13, and when the flash popped at the end of that exposure, it was intended to freeze that moment and create the motion blur I was after. What I didn’t anticipate was the Fuera in the background catching the light from the strobe. You can see it’s a dull blur until the flash fires and lights up the circle, making it look like it’s glowing.

As Lefty Gomez said, “I’d rather be lucky than good!”

Here’s a special desktop wallpaper just for the Rossi fans.

Having moved back to Yamaha from Ducati, Valentino Rossi has once again updated his signature number, this time with a blue outline to go with the Yamaha blue background. His 2013 M1 has a chrome-finish fairing, as well.

To download the 1920-pixel wide jpg, just click on the image above!

If you enjoy free content like this, get email updates in our Newsletter to make sure you don’t miss a thing!

April’s hi-res desktop wallpaper calendar from PHOTO.GP features Marc Marquez’ Repsol Honda at Losail.

Sorry for the delay with this one, but as April 1st was so close to the start of the season I wanted to wait for an image that summed up the beginning of MotoGP 2013. This shot if os Marc Marquez’ Repsol Honda in pit lane at Losail as a mechanic revs the engine. Every few seconds the rainbow lights flash, so it took several tries to get this one just right. Thanks to everyone who waited patiently for this month’s desktop calendar–I hope it was worth it!

To download the 1920-pixel wide jpg, just click on the image above!

This calendar is also available in Euro-format, with weeks starting on Monday instead of Sunday. To download this version, just click here.

If you enjoy free content like this, get email updates in our Newsletter to make sure you don’t miss a thing!

Here are three hi-res desktop wallpapers for fans of the new Ducati 1199 Panigale R! The first, shown above, features Ducati test rider Alessandro Valia HARD on the brakes into CotA’s uphill Turn 1, front suspension compressed, smoke off the rear tire, fully pushing the new Panigale to its limit.

The other two choices feature the R posed on CotA’s distinctive Red, White and Blue trackside lines. Click on any image (or all!) to download.

If you enjoy free content like this, get email updates in our Newsletter to make sure you don’t miss a thing!

It was a thrilling and unexpected honor to get a call from Ducati about helping out with the first international product launch the Italian company has hosted in the United States. Some of you figured out where I was a few weeks ago when, under full radio silence, we visited Austin’s Circuit of the Americas to do some test shots for the upcoming launch, which is going on this week.

Yesterday was looooong, as the four photographers here worked from morning to late at night, first photographing nearly 30 journalists, then sorting the images so they could be delivered the next day. What a learning experience! It has been fantastic to have Andrew Wheeler along for the company and always-entertaining driving to and from the track. It’s another honor for me to work with Gigi Soldano and Marco Campelli of Milagro, for whom this type of thing is old hat. They have a very complex process completely wired.

Many of the prep-shots we created over the past month are available in one place via Ashpalt & Rubber, if you’d like to take a look. The rest will be showing up in websites and in magazines in the coming days as the journalists who are riding the bike this week turn in their reports on the experience.

Nicky and Ben rode the bike early in the week, and not only got to try Ducati’s latest but also benefitted from a few laps around the newest MotoGP track. A lap before the one shown here, as Nicky passed by I’d decided to move to a different spot so I missed a big wheelie he’d done for me. He gave me another chance as he came around the next time. Glad I got this one!

It was very interesting to photograph the journalists, who as a group exhibit a wide range of riding skill and confidence on a borrowed, $30k superbike. Some of them really threw it around the track, a few even sliding it a bit in the long right-hander known as Turns 16-17-18. But Nicky was, as you’d expect, in another league.

During the test a few weeks ago, Ducati test rider Alessandro Valia was a pleasure to watch and photograph. Braking hard for the uphill entrance to Turn 1, he had the suspension at full compression with smoke rising from the rear tire. Revealing my naiveté yet again, I visited the same spot at one point while some journalists were out on track, thinking I might get similar photos. Um, no.

Can’t blame them, of course, no one wants to be the journo who crashes a brand new 1199 R at the launch. And in general I was impressed with how fast they were, especially given the situation.

Tomorrow the next round of 30 riders hits the track, including good friend Jensen Beeler of A&R. I’ve photographed him many times and it will be nice finally to have a rider out there I recognize! We try to get shots of each and every journalist, of course, and this is harder than it sounds. When shooting MotoGP, I know all the riders and can keep them in my head as I go. (Ok, got Rossi, Hayden, Stoner, so far. Need Lorenzo and Pedrosa next time around.) But when 15 riders I’m seeing for the first time come around, who can tell who’s who?

Finally, a word about working for Ducati. Many Ducati folks are visiting from Italy to join their North American-based colleagues for this important launch, and I don’t think I’ve ever worked with a group of people who so quickly and earnestly made me feel a part of the family. The culture at Ducati is fantastic. To all of my friends and fans who are Ducatisti, you support a truly wonderful company that’s comprised of amazing individuals. It was a pleasure to be part of this amazing team!

When someone emails with this question, I know that person has really been there, not just for the enjoyment of shooting the cars or bikes on track, but for the bloody aftermath of trying to manage thousands of images on Monday morning.

When I first started photographing racing again, I, too, finished the weekend with no way of finding all the shots of a given rider or team without scrolling through a seemingly endless number of images. If someone asked for a good shot of Nicky Hayden, it took way too long to find those I wanted to chose from, and I never knew which I was overlooking because I simply missed them as I scrolled along.

What I needed was a method to add keywords, quickly and efficiently, to the thousands of images I created on a race weekend. But my first attempts to do this were terrific failures. Some of the images would have some of the keywords they needed, and huge groups of images would have no keywords whatsoever.

Because catalogs are opened and searched over and over again as the years go by, this problem continues until you fix it once and for all. To be able to find the images you want when you want them, complete keywording is essential! Each time you search through a catalog that has NOT been keyworded correctly and completely, you’re wasting time and probably missing images you need to find. So having an efficient system and applying the discipline to get those keywords attached to each image as early as possible saves time and money over the years: Each time you to a properly keyworded catalog you benefit from the initial time investment.

After years of refinement, I now have a keywording workflow that allows me to drive away from a race on Sunday with all of my keywording DONE! And that’s what I’d like to share with you in this FAQ.

I use Adobe Lightroom to catalog my images and I rely on several of its features to get my keywords applied quickly. The main features in my keywording workflow are Keyword Sets and Quick Collection. With these two great features and a strategy I’ve refined after much trial and error, I can keyword up to a thousand images in 30-40 minutes.

Keyword Sets are collections of keywords, up to 9 of them, that show up in a panel when the Keyword Set is selected in the Library Module of Lightroom. Quick Collection is just what it sounds like, a group of images temporarily added to the QC space by selecting the images and pressing B, which toggles inclusion in the Quick Collection. It’s really the Quick Collection that makes the difference time-wise, as you’ll see below.

Preparation

A fair bit of work goes into setting up the workflow elements before I start doing any keywording. But once done at the beginning of the season, most of this work applies to every race, with a few additions and changes that pop up along the way.

The first step is creating Keyword Sets for each rider and one for the event itself, which I call Race Keywords: This is the set I use in the process below to make sure that the keywords related to the event are applied consistently to all images in the catalog. (In fact, if you go back through the older catalogs at PHOTO.GP and look at the keywords, you can see mistakes in that consistency due to the fact that in 2009 and 2010 I’d not refined my workflow to its current state. Now and then I reopen those catalogs and redo and then apply the Race Keyword set to remove those errors in the naming conventions I’ve settled on.)

For example, when I get to Qatar in a few weeks I will update the set I used in November at Valencia to reflect the new location and other info. This set will contain the keywords: MotoGP, Round 01, Losail, Qatar, Moto2, Moto3, 1000s (more of this below).

The rider Keyword Sets are based at the beginning of a new season on the previous year’s collection of Sets and edited to reflect team and sponsor changes. This saves me having to recreate sets for each rider.

Some change very little, such as Dani Pedrosa’s since I started keywording this way, he has been on one team with the same main sponsors), while others change a fair bit, like Andrea Dovizioso’s. New riders require the creation of a new Keyword Set, but in fact this only takes a minute to do from scratch. I usually hold off on new riders to Moto3 and Moto2 and let that rider’s performance over the season determine if he or she deserves a unique Keyword Set. I do not keyword all of my Moto2 and Moto3 images, only those of the main riders in each class.

As a side note, each season also has its own collection of Keyword Sets, because my archive goes back several years, and because riders change teams, and teams change sponsors, etc. I keep each season’s collection of Keyword Sets in its own folder on Dropbox. This way, if I go back to 2009 and find, as I often do, that some images from that event are not completely keyworded, I can in moments supply keyword sets that fit the rider-team-sponsor combinations from that period. It’s as easy as swapping the currently used collection with the correct one from the Dropbox folder. This is also how I switch series, as each season of WSBK has its own folder with Keyword Sets from that season’s riders.

To switch from one collections of Keyword Sets to another on a Mac, simply replace the current collection with the desired one by swapping folders at this location: User/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Keyword Sets

The .lrtemplate files can be loose in the Keyword Sets folder or contained in their own folder, which I prefer for moving different collections between LR to their Dropbox folder. Renamed set files will be written into the Keyword Sets folder so keep an eye out here to make sure everything that belongs in the season’s folder is included before you swap it out.

But back to the future, Marty, and the 2013 season’s keyword sets. I started this collection at the Valencia test, as soon as riders appeared with their new teams. The 46 Rossi set swapped Team Marlboro Ducati for Team Factory Yamaha, because at that time the Monster sponsorship had not yet been announced. For Losail, it’s an easy thing to update the team Keyword and from then on all Rossi images will bear the Team Monster Yamaha keyword.

At Losail, I will see what other changes need to be reflected in the rider Keyword Sets and make those changes before I do any keywording with the workflow below. Now, for the workflow itself:

Make it Happen, Cap’n!

Here is the process, with explanations as needed below.

1. Import session’s images
2. Apply keywords from Race Keywords Set to all images in this Import.
3. Apply Class keywords as needed.
4. Apply situation keywords such as ‘pit lane’ or ‘grid’
5. Now that keyword ’1000s’ has been applied to all images of premiere class subjects, use this keyword to filter the Import and find all premiere class images.
6. Select all and press B to add to Quick Collection.
7. Beginning with any rider who has many images in Import, select as many images as show in Grid View and apply all keywords from that rider’s Keyword Set to those images.
8. With just-keyworded images still selected, press B to remove those images from Quick Collection.
9. Scroll down and find more images of current rider and repeat (apply images from Keyword Set, press B to remove from Quick Collection.)
10. Once all of this rider’s images have been keyworded and removed from Quick Collection, return to top and repeat with another rider until all images have been keyworded.
11. BACK UP IMAGES AND CATALOG

Depending on how many images are in the Import, this can be done in 30-40 minutes and BAM! all of my premiere class images are keyworded and done. I can now find all images of Rossi or Lorenzo or Karel Abraham or all Yamaha images or all images of MotoGP riders who wear AGV helmets in a matter of seconds.

Some remarks on the steps in the above process

1. After each session, I return to the media center and move images from my CF cards onto a SSD attached to my laptop. I do this by copying files in the Finder rather than importing via LR because I copy data from multiple CF cards at once. I import files into a folder named with the day’s date, 2013-03-10, inside a folder named for the event, MotoGP 2012 Round 18 Valencia. Once all files have been copied, I Import them into the LR catalog.

2. I select all images and apply keywords for the round, series, location.

3. If I have multiple classes included in the Import, I select all the Moto2 images, for example, and apply ‘Moto2′ keyword to those, then do the same for Moto3 if needed. Because ‘MotoGP’ applies to all images, I use the keyword ’1000s’ to the premiere class images. This step only takes a minute because all the Moto2 images will be together as long as I’ve sorted the View by Capture Time AND my cameras are all set to the correct and identical (or nearly so) local time.

4. Similar to classes, shots from pit lane or the grid will often be grouped together by Capture Time. I like to be able to find all pit lane shots, so I add this keyword to all images made in this location.

5-6. I use the keyword ’1000s’ to collect all premiere class images, select them, and add to Quick Collection. I now have all images to be keyworded first in the oh-so-useful Quick Collection mode. The reason this is so vitally important is this: as keywords are applied and those keyworded images are removed from the QC, the number of images that must be scrolled through decreases. The first passes through the Quick Collection take the longest, but as each rider is keyworded and removed, the next pass is faster, as is the next and the next. This is also why I do riders with the most images in the Quick Collection first.

7-10. For example, I always shot Casey Stoner when he passed by, so any Import had lots of Stoner images in it. He showed up frequently, which meant that each time I scrolled down I was likely to see images of him that required application of his Keyword Set. It also meant that by the time I’d reached the end of the Import and removed all Stoner images, the Quick Collection was noticeably smaller, often by several hundred images.

After Stoner, Rossi, Pedrosa, Lorenzo, and Hayden had been keyworded and removed, the Quick Collection would be MUCH smaller. That makes it easier to find riders of whom I have fewer images, apply their Keyword Sets, return to the top and start again.

11. After all of this work, you sure don’t want to have to do it again, so before I leave to shoot the next session, I start a back up to my laptop’s internal HDD. Back at the hotel, I will set a third back up to process while I’m sleeping.

Secret Weapon: QuicKeys

Applying keywords from a Keyword Set can be done several ways. The slowest is by clicking on each individual word in the set. Faster is by holding Option (ALT for PC-users) and typing the number that corresponds to the keyword you want to apply. This works well, though at the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome when processing many images at one sitting.

The best way I’ve found is to use QuicKeys to apply all keywords in a Keyword Set with a single key stroke. I use Control-R to make QuicKeys type Option-1, Option-2, Option-3 — Option-9, and thus add of a Set’s keywords to the selected images.

If you already use QuicKeys, you’re no doubt preparing to comment that Lion and Mountain Lion OSs have played havoc with its functionality. Fortunately for us, this is one type of Shortcut that still works just fine. This is fortunate, as I’ve seen no sign that this useful program will ever be updated to work with new Apple operating systems. I don’t know if you can even still buy it!

Exceptions

Sometimes you have images with more than one rider that you want to contain keywords from multiple sets.

Here’s how I handle this situation. I decide which of the riders is the true subject and apply all keywords from his Set. I then add number, name and team from the secondary rider(s). When processing the Import, I simply don’t remove images like this from the Quick Collection after adding the primary rider’s Keyword Set. Then when I make a later pass through the Import and encounter the secondary rider, I add the smaller set of keywords for that rider. If it’s only one more rider, I then press B and consider that image completely keyworded. If there’s another rider to include, I wait until that rider’s pass through, and so on.

For group shots, I prefer not to over-keyword by adding too many for the entire group of riders. I simply use my judgment for which keywords to include based on what I think viewers will be looking for in order to want to show them this image.

Customize Your Own System

I organize the Keyword Sets by rider number, but there’s nothing that says you have to do the same. If last name makes more sense to you, that’s fine, too. You can use any method of organizing that speeds up your ability to get the appropriate keywords to the selected images.

I include Moto2 and Moto3 in each season’s collection, but because of rider number duplication here and there, I add the prefix of the class, such as ‘Moto3 11 Cortese’ so that 11 Spies is a safe distance away on the list. This also groups all Moto2 sets together on the list, so that when I’m keywording a class, the sets for those riders are grouped together. I don’t keyword all Moto2 or Moto3 images, but if I did, I’d probably have a separate folder for each class as they contain so many more riders–the Keyword Sets list would be too long if it included each rider from all three classes.

A few more tips

I keep all of my collections (MotoGP, WSBK, ALMS etc) in a DropBox folder when not active in Lightroom so that they backup automatically and are available anywhere I land. When I need to switch from one collection of Keyword Sets to another, I move a copy of the folder from its Dropbox location to the LR Keyword Sets folder as explained above. When I’m done editing, if I’ve made any changes to any of the keyword sets, I just copy the entire folder back to the Dropbox location so that the latest version will be backed up.

For easy access to User/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Keyword Sets, I have an alias of this folder on the desktop of both my laptop and my desktop machines. Then I just double-click that alias and there’s the folder I need to access to swap Keyword Sets.

Finally, the PHOTO.GP collection is hosted via SmugMug, for which there is a LightRoom plug-in that allows me to upload images directly to the appropriate gallery from within LightRoom. All of this keywording goes along with each image as its uploaded, so that folks can search PHOTO.GP for all images of any rider, team, and many sponsors if that’s what they are looking for. This makes the time spent on race weekends applying the above workflow to my images that much more useful.

But I’m always looking for ways to refine this system, so if you have any ideas about how to improve it, or wish to share your own system, please do so in a comment below!

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