Riding in Black & White on the American River Trail in Rancho Cordova / Sacramento

I manually took 801 black and white pictures while riding my bike on the American River trail in Rancho Cordova and Sacramento. I built a mount for my bike (for only 87 cents, by the way) to hold my camera and then I had to manually push the button to take pictures. This time around I tried the "continuous shooting" feature on my camera so that as long as I was holding the button down, my camera was taking photos. These shots were then placed in sequence to form the following "video".

I road at an average of 15mph on my mountain bike.

I think the video got a bit washed out in the middle because of the sun. If you notice, when there are few trees along the bike path, the pictures look very bright. It was either that or evidence of my camera's death since the last frame in this ride was the last breath of life for my camera (bummer).

I'm no photographer, but just a guy who loves biking and is experimenting with taking photos while on the road. This is my third "video" like this and I can only see my methodology evolving over time to capture some of the essence of the trails and how fun it is to ride them. I also plan to add some other creative bits into the videos over time (although one problem is that my camera broke during this outing - it has been failing for some time and finally it bit the dust).

Previous videos were taken either by manually holding the camera in my hands (before I built a mount), or by mounting the camera and then manually snapping 800 or so photos. I think there are advantages and disadvantages to each method.

This time around I wanted to try black and white imagery. I like the way it came out because it's fun to see the trails in black and white, but at the same time, there sure is some missing beauty when no longer seeing the vibrant colors while riding.

By the way, did you see the snake on the trail at the beginning of the video? A group of riders stopped to watch it cross the trail.

If you like the video, rate it. If you have any questions about how I did this, feel free to contact me via YouTube or email at ryan@lundquistcompany.com

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• American River
• Bike Trail
• Photography
• Black & White
• Rancho Cordova
• Sacramento

[lundquistco]

Thanks Bill. And I appreciate the original music you put together too. The trails are absolutely wonderful and I am so thankful to live close enough to them to ride my bike there to get on them.

The mount is shown at the end of Video # 2. Thanks for your encouragement.

[batonrougeappraiser]

Ryan, that's so cool. You're having lots of fun doing these and relaxing at the same time and you're so great at this. The one thing about your videos I've learned is how blessed you are to live over there with all of those public paved trails. That's very rare in America. While Baton Rouge has a "Velodome" for bike racing, we don't have many bike trails, none like in your video.

I was hoping to see your $0.87 camera mount at the end of the video.