Messing about in the GIMP again – this time I was inspired by some black and white shots to have a quick blast at playing with another image.

This time I picked a shot of a single subject and played with either desaturating the background or the rider. Desaturation was done on luminousity rather than lightness, as this seemed to reduce the ‘burnout’.

I couldn’t decide if it was better to have the rider in colour or the background – so I posted both.

You can see the full-sized upload here.

This week has seen the Tour Down Under around South Australia. It is the only competition outside of Europe on the UCI ProTour – which isn’t too bad, since it is only a little over a decade old.

This year got even more attention than ever before, thanks to Lance Armstrong’s return to competitive racing – and as of this morning, he was one of the cyclists who were still in the running to win the 2009 Tour. I guess the 7-time Tour de France winner has still got that edge.

Unfortunately for me, most of the stages for the race have been on weekdays, and so I’ve missed most of the action (including a major incident where several cyclists were seriously injured following a crash). However, I was able to get to the Cancer Council Classic last Sunday evening, and also down to Willunga and Aldinga for Stage 5 earlier today.

And, of course, I took my Sony – so there’s plenty of photo’s of each of the two day’s races.

I’ve also put together a quick map of Stage 5, and with some markers for where I grabbed some shots of the race:

View Larger Map