Written by: Chris Wallis
Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Yesterday was the first day that I drove the whole race route, on the way to the shots. It was a painful journey as I only made it to the bottom of the 2^nd climb before I caught up with the caravan and was then left with a slow drive the rest of the way to the final climb, which was only 10km from the finish.

It was then a tough choice or where to stop, having driven past some of the early spaces the road then got to people lined hairpins so left to drive to the summit and hope there was a space just over the top. I was lucky and there was a nice place to park just a few meters from the summit and then left to walk back down the climb to find a good spot.

This was a the first time I had to shoot through dense crowds, in classic road lined tour de France style the spectators get so close to the riders and almost don’t get out of the way.

Thankfully I found a nice spot to catch them head on and the crowd were real kind and parted Just in time. The only real challenge was judging the lighting, quite a few shots were screwed up and the sun went behind clouds in seconds, even with a flash on for fill. The only other shot that was missed was the white jersey as he attacked about 5m from where I was and burst out of the crowd that I didn’t have time to focus properly.

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