Bicycles(s)! Bicycles(s)!

Finished up my photos from the 2011 Philly bike race. Check them out over here. Or don't. Free country.

I ride around town on my road-racing bicycle

Because I like to get things done in a timely fashion, I've finished posting my photos from this year's TD Bank Philadelphia International Cycling Championship over here.

The orange monster

Even if this photo features Nick Swisher of the considerably disliked New York Yankees, it's still a pretty cool photo with a color scheme appreciated here at Orange Whip.

Photo by Noah K. Murray of The Star Ledger/US Presswire.

L.A. on fire

The Sacramento Bee posted some great photos from their coverage of the wildfires raging near Los Angeles. The above is by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

Via Ron Wood, who also pointed out these time lapse vids of the fires.

UPDATE: The fire has now been declared an arson, and thus a homicide. From this Reuters article:

The so-called Station Fire has killed two firefighters, destroyed 64 homes and torched an area the size of Chicago in the nine days it has roared across the rugged San Gabriel Mountains overlooking Los Angeles.

Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right

I checked out the Philadelphia International Championship bike race for the first time this year with some friends and family, and I just finished posting my photos over here. Everything was shot on Lemon Hill, aside from a few down on Kelly Drive.

Glastonbury? Who ever heard of a Glastonbury?

The Big Picture has some pretty cool photos from the Glastonbury festival, including the above by Joel Ryan/AP and the below by Leon Neal/Getty Images. Via.

Not sure what this is about. I can only hope the guy's carrying cases or a quarter-keg in his arms.

Notown

Anyone want to get in on the ground floor of a residential investment? The above is part of a photo essay by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffrey on the ruins of Detroit, as featured on Time.com.

Tracking back, I saw it linked by Ben Templesmith in reference to a pretty insightful column by Australian journalist Guy Rundle, as seen here.

There’s many places you can visit with your limited time on earth — the Turkish rivieria, Finland’s Ice Hotel, Mt Fuji, Wobbie World — but everyone who wants to understand the last century and this one, should see Detroit.

Why? Because Detroit is the first modern urban ruin, the largest city that has simply been allowed to die.

Clear the set

Baltimore photog The Hood Watch posted photos from a former soundstage used for The Wire, aka the best TV show ever. I can't believe all this cool stuff is going to waste. I would fill my apartment with this useless junk, after clearing it of the current useless junk.

The Baltimore Sun newsroom was an awesomely realistic set, and the photos of it here kind of look like my former place of employment ... while there were people working there. I wouldn't be surprised if it looks exactly like this pretty soon.

Via.

Short way 'round

I was looking around for some Formula 1 photos from Friday's nighttime practice session in Singapore, in prep for Sunday's first F1 race under lights, but didn't see much. Did find some sweet Moto GP shots though.


Though he looks like he's sliding on his side, I assure you he's riding out of this. The Chupa Chups man, Jorge Lorenzo, at Twin Ring Motegi during practice Friday (for us). Shot by Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images.

Won and done

I finally finished posting all my photos from the American Le Mans Series race at Lime Rock to my Flickr page, so check 'em if interested. There's a bunch of shots from the Porsche corral, and some racing ones too.

Though I couldn't see it from my seating position, David Brabham made an awesome last-lap pass to take the overall win in the Patron Highcroft Acura P2 prototype, passing the rival Penske Porsche RS Spyder in Turn 1 from the outside like the Porsche wasn't even inside of him. Brilliant mate!

Fin

The Tour de France ended Sunday, but if you didn't catch it, or just wanted to look at some cool pics, check out the slideshow I made. I loaded up shots every night after watching that day's stage, and thus maybe had too many shots that told the story of that day, instead of just looking cool, but most are still pretty cool.

There were some big moments (Barloworld rider going over the cliff, Cunigo faceplanting into a concrete barrier, dude smashing into a tree at full speed, some notable breakaway efforts) that mysteriously got no play in the Yahoo Sports gallery, so I took what I could get. Aside from a couple only, I stuck to shots from Getty Images, because the AP stuff was always small and very flat colorwise.

Also, there seemed to be a lot less random shots of competitors this year — so the guys and teams that weren't in the running didn't get a lot of playing time. When they did show guys for no reason, as with the Stage 20 time trial, I probably included them just to represent their team and uniforms a little bit.

Doing this thing meant I had to watch every single stage, and I was usually up late loading them up, so next year might not see such a comprehensive effort. Or I might feel like it again after a year. We'll see.

Le slideshow

The crazy last week of the 2007 Tour de France, and great photos from the photogs covering it, inspired me to do a slideshow last year.

This year I started from Day 1, and I'm trying to tell the story of each day's stage while mixing in some cool randoms. So check it out. I'm grabbing all the photos from the Yahoo Sports cycling gallery.

With some of the heavyweights out of this year's race, it's been wide open so far. Good to see the American squads — Team Columbia (High Road) and Garmin-Chipotle (Slipstream) — doing well.

Who's the big winner?

In case you didn't hear, Danica Patrick won her first IRL race — becoming the first woman to win in the series — at Twin Ring Motegi in Japan in April. Aside from its historic significance, the win offered a funny photo op as Patrick is nearly equaled in size by her trophy.

I actually cropped Katsumi Kasahara's AP photo to single out Patrick because I thought it was funnier this way. But to see second place finisher Helio Castroneves hold his trophy for another funny comparison, check out the original.

Let's party

I've seen this photo in at least three different places recently, so I'm not giving anyone credit, but the awesomeness of this needed to be noted.