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| Not the usual Headline shot, but it captures what it means to complete these races, the achievement of the individual and the joy of support and camaraderie from fellow participants. I hope your race weekend was *THIS* good too !! |
Well done from another perfect weekend weather and action.
First up - yes the Reading Triathlon gallery is now up - there's a story behind the delay - and that's at the bottom after some photos...
Other galleries now up are the new and improved Chestnut Tree House Littlehampton10k, - a new route, fantastic organisation - always perfect weather, chip timed - a very fast and flat course on the promenade and into the closed roads of the town. Deserves to be a 2500 person race - if only they would include it on the Sussex GP races - or at the very least - not clash on dates - it's certainly one of the best around. It's grown to 1200 this year - I hope it gets even bigger next year and raises more money for the charity. Did I mention that our profits go to the charity ? So please make sure you buy yours today !
The fabulous Bacchus and Pilgrim half marathons and marathons are also all online - fancy dress and wine - then Events to Live will put you right at Denbies, and if a classic off road trail run is your thing then you won't go far wrong with the excellently organised Pilgrim route.
Archive 2016 - is now going up and in full swing on our new photoshelter gallery here:
http://uksp.photoshelter.com/page2 so if you have missed a gallery earlier this year - check it out.
Survey
The current survey responses says you mostly like the gallery links and the photo captions, so that's what I'll try to keep it to as the main front end content, and every now and again - there will be a tale or something about what is going on somewhere at the bottom end - this will probably depend on the time of day/night/early hours I end up working on writing these blogs !
Have some input - the survey is on the gallery front page here:
http://gallery.sussexsportphotography.com
The Latest Gallery lists
Reading Tri
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| Top T Shirt |
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| All going well out of T1 |
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| Clearly surprised he's doing so well ! |
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| Steady and ready for the bike |
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| All going ok |
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| Look - no hands ! |
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| Top tandem team riding |
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| Going very smoothly on the run |
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| Made it out of the swim alive, this is OK |
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| The water tastes fantastic |
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| Always give your friends and family a wave |
Chestnut Tree House - Littlehampton 10k
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| perfect sunny conditions at the start |
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| Its getting more popular each year - you should be here ! |
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| at the 1.5k mark and starting to run towards town |
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| always give the camera a wave |
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| Give your friends a wave |
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| keeping step together |
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| Ed ran in a PB on this fast flat course |
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| concentrating on the way at 4.5k |
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| always run with a balloon if you have any excuse to |
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| let your friends know how things are going |
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| Amazing win of the womens race |
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| Just needs something else ? but what ? |
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| a sword and a helmet - that's what you need !! |
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| Great running into the really well set up finish = excellent branding from the Chestnut Team |
Bacchus Half and Full Marathon
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| very scary spice |
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| 'allo 'allo I will post this only once. |
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| everyone had an absolutely fabulous day out dahling |
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| Get out of the water |
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| Pink Flamingos, honestly - what were you thinking ? |
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| Starting to see triple yet ? |
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| Marvellous |
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| For a moment they forgot their selfie-duties |
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| just watch out behind you. Oh you do. Careful now. |
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| Makapaka to the rescue |
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| Time to find some pollen |
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| Romans on the lash |
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| The Dictator pays homage to the Mo |
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| There's always someone who looks too bloody good at running |
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| Apt choice of costume for the days antics |
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| So, what did little Red Riding Hood have in her basket after all ? |
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| Drunk#2 left Drunk#1 to explain... |
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| Ave Romanus |
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| Bananas in Pyjamas. Well Quite. |
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| All we needed now was a massive Donkey Kong |
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| Quite the most disturbing morph costume I've seen so far. Excellent. |
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| The Hills were very much alive |
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| Bonjour et Voila !! |
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| Where do I photoshop in the rainbow again ? |
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| On your marks... |
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| This is starting to look like an overbudget Stag/Hen night |
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| Mad as one!! |
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| I Don't understand any more.... |
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| Tuff Fitty Tri Club turned up in their normal workwear |
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| Minionesque and ticker tape to celebrate |
Pilgrim Half and Full Marathon
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| All good into the village past the pub |
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| Fantastic woodland trails |
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| Great Paths along the Pilgrims Way |
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| Plenty of space for Aldershot to overtake (as usual) |
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| Homage to Mo |
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| Double Thumbs up at the top of the Common |
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| Sarah had a good run out |
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| What a view. Don't know why Colin chose to Run it instead of work... |
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| At the top of the hill, all smiles |
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| Only two more laps to go |
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| This is ripe for photoshopping in cars, hurdles, high jumps, karate targets etc etc |
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| Do 100 Marathons. Get a Trophy. Thats a target... |
Reading Tri - took a bit of time didn't it ?
So - what was the delay eh ? Firstly apologies to everyone waiting for their gallery - we fully recognise that late photos "miss the boat" of interest in them, and that is indeed regrettable - however we do try to do our best - and we also know that 16,000 images with little or no cataloguing that can't be searched - also results in no orders - because nobody can find anything.
The other thing about triathlons - and we have learnt this from hard experience - is that if any of the stages are not indexed - swim, bike or run - then sales dive down about 75%. Basically people want a shot of each stage, they want easy search, and they want them very soon after the race.
Always catalogue !
So with this in mind - we always catalogue them, and we always insist on hand numbering at triathlon events (face numbering will do instead) so we can do this. Alas, when the hand numbering doesn't happen - what are we left with ? race timing mat data, bicycle helmet numbers (hopefully on the front), and flapping numbers on tri-belts that are worn on the back (against the rules by the way) - and nothing for the swim stage.
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| Guess the number ! |
I'm not sure if you've looked recently - but everyone looks the same coming out of the swim in their wetsuits, and the timing mat is at T1 entry - not where the photos are taken - so if people overtake after the photo then the timing mat data isn't sequential to help with indexing the swim - and wrongly catalogued images are worse than simply no cataloguing.
Finish line first
However at the finish - the timing mat data and people running in has half a chance because some runners do have their number showing and you can work your way down the list in order - shot by shot runner by runner. This sorts out about 3500 images.
That's the easy bit. We then decided to use a new program we have found and trial it with face recognition - using the runner numbers from the finish line shots we had catalogued as the face ID, we left it to ingest the 16000 images, and then try to match them all together. This only took about 12 hours of processing time for a top spec PC, which we couldn't use for anything else at the time.
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| Finish line - guess the numbers ! |
Group together
After this, we then went through each face, using the face recognition software to make suggestions and group the same face together. Telling it which ones were wrong, accepting the ones that were right, and then updating the records for those grouped images with the correct Face ID. If your wondering - there were about 370 faces, and this had to be done for each one.
Fortunately - it got more accurate the further through we got...
This identified and helped to catalogue a further 6000 images, leaving about 7000 images without cataloguing - things like helmets, baseball caps and shade and bright light can significantly effect the efficiency of the face recognition systems.
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| Who hell he ? |
One-by-one
Finally, hoping that one image out of a sequence of shots will have been catalogued, or the helmet numbers were visible - we then went back through all the images - one by one - to try our best to identify everyone - and we ended up with only 669 images unidentified out of a total 14,167 that passed our minimum quality standards, and that number probably is enough for people to have a browse through if they get no results from searching for their race number.
Conclusion
So - combine all that with the small task of cataloguing the Nuts Challenge races which we had to do at the same time through the week - where the numbering starts of with the barcodes, and then one-by-one through all the images trying to read hidden tattoos - and yes - that takes time...
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| Guess the number... |
So overall - we've done a quality job on the cataloguing of this triathlon when faced with massive difficulties, however we have probably missed the window of opportunity to actually sell any images. Three photographers costs and the excessive back-office costs of cataloguing these images - essentially three times more work than usual - most certainly won't be recovered from the sales - the only conclusion - put clauses into the contracts to cover the costs of converting the galleries into free downloads without complete indexing - if the hand numbering isn't done - but no event organiser will sign up to that !
So what's the reality - we simply cannot cover races without numbering - we would go out of business almost immediately - and if you hadn't noticed we don't do a whole load of triathlons these days that don't do free downloads - and now you know one of the main reasons why.
So now you know the fun we get up to in the back office when cataloguing - it is an absolutely critical part of the service we provide - and we need your help at events to make it possible - wear your numbers with pride !
Pic2Go Barcodes for indexing and much more..
In other news - we're working with Pic2Go UK and Threshold Sports on the "Deloitte Ride Across Britain" - a 9 day Lands End to John O'Groats cycle ride. Everything is being fully catalogued using Pic2Go barcodes to deliver live images directly to individuals Facebook accounts through each day of the ride. So far we have had over 750,000 sponsor branded page impressions for the event by the end of day three, helping the friends and families see riders progress for each day as it happens !
Fingers crossed for the continuing good weather for the rest of the week !
And final last calls for the Reigate Half Marathon and 10k this weekend - it's a big one...
http://bit.ly/Run-Reigate
see you there ?
until next time
Anthony
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