Ride of Silence, 2010

Two weeks ago I shot the Ride of Silence bicycle ride that started and ended at Piedmont Park.  It was one of over 300 rides honoring fallen and injured riders that occurred across the world on May 19th.  If it sounds familiar, it’s because I shot it last year (see here).  This year though I decided to do something more for the project.  I knew it was a story that might be of interest to CNN so I told my boss about it and he seemed remotely interested.  I proposed it as a multimedia piece with photos, audio and possibly video.

If I was going to do this though, I needed to overcome a major obstacle I ran into last year though; after the riders left the park there weren’t really any other photos I could get while they were riding the course.  I decided I would try to mount a camera onto a rider’s bike so I could get photos during the ride itself as well.  That in combination with the suggestion of my boss to find someone riding who had been in an accident to focus on narrowed the story down.

At that point I found Robert and Kelly Wilhite while looking at the Atlanta ride’s facebook page.  Apparently Kelly had been in a bad accident last year and the two were willing to go on camera to talk about what happened to her.  The final project came out largely like I imagined it would mixing video interviews with photos and audio from the ride.

If there was a single thing I would change about the project from a technical standpoint, it would definitely be to have used a fisheye lens instead of my wide angle.  The fisheye would have given me more separation from the subject and have weighed less.  The overall rig used to keep the camera attached to the bike probably weighed around 15-20 lbs.  Using the fisheye probably could have cut about 2-3 lbs off of that, and while it doesn’t sound like much it can make a big difference.

If you haven’t yet, please be sure to watch the multimedia project by click here.