Ninth Street Derby — The Wellspring Criterium Resurrected!

When I was a kid, a local Durham gro­cery used to host an annual Cri­terium. I never saw any of those races, but I remem­ber all of the great Cri­terium posters that Well­spring used to have up in its store, and always thought that urban bike races would be pretty neat to see. Well­spring became Whole Foods many years ago now, and the Cri­teri­ums ended with the local grocery.

Now, thank­fully, Cri­teri­ums have returned to Ninth street in the form of the Ninth Street Derby, orga­nized by Rusty Miller and pre­sented by Durham Cycles and the Happy Tooth. Whether the pre­sen­ters are aware of the for­mer races or not doesn’t matter–the course was tight, the pilot car was a Fer­rari 430 Sypder, and the atmos­phere was one of good spir­ited com­pe­ti­tion, of test­ing one­self amongst like-minded peers. I enjoyed chat­ting with the spec­ta­tors, the rac­ers, and am so glad I stopped in to take some photos.

Racers–if you hap­pen by here, I have lots more pho­tos that might have you in them–these are just some of my favorites from the day that I chose to share here. Feel free to Con­tact me if you want me to look for a photo of you.

The only pho­to­graphic point I want to make is to empha­size the impor­tance of hav­ing per­sonal projects and shoot­ing things that are inter­est­ing to you. A spec­ta­tor asked who I was shoot­ing for, and I said, “myself,” with a smile. Per­sonal projects allow you to exper­i­ment, to develop your style, to try things with­out pres­sure. If you screw up, you just don’t share the pho­tos! If you suc­ceed, you might expand your expo­sure a bit, make some new con­nec­tions, find some new oppor­tu­ni­ties, learn some new tech­niques. For me, this was my first time pan­ning in earnest, and my first time pre-focusing to cap­ture action that went by too fast for the autofocus.