Hasta La Ideas

Core77 is pleased to partner with Windows Phone to bring you a series of photo diaries this summer. Based on the theme of Reinvention, we’re looking to capture the fleeting moments and highlight the often-overlooked facets of the world around us through the lens of the Nokia Lumia 928, especially in the low-light settings in which its camera excels. (All photos were taken with the Nokia Lumia 928 smartphone and are published without postproduction unless otherwise noted.)

Reporting & photos by Ray Hu

Like the Bicycle Film Festival, the Red Hook Criterium has become an annual highlight for the NYC cycling community in just a few short years since its inception. In the five years since the inaugural race—a birthday celebration for local cyclist and race organizer David Trimble—the event has quickly evolved from an unsanctioned race in an oddball industrial corner of Brooklyn to a multinational Championship Series, thanks largely to title sponsor Rockstar Games.

Of course, the sheer logistics of organizing a criterium on city streets aren’t quite as scalable as a grassroots film festival, and the fact that the series expands to two new locations this year is a testament to Trimble’s hustle. In addition to the OG event in Red Hook, he introduced the RHC Milan in October 2010; these two events bookend this year’s Championship Series, which also includes two new events: last weekend’s crit in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, documented here, and a penultimate race in Barcelona in August.

The white balance was set to auto; the photo on the left is slightly warmer, but both turned out quite well. (I switched to Night mode for the race itself.)

I would have liked to attempt to shoot the event on a DSLR, but considering the sheer difficulty of shooting 1.) bicycles 2.) in motion 3.) at night, I realized that the race would be the perfect opportunity to put the Nokia Lumia 928, running Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 OS, to the test.

A staff member mentioned that the cobblestones were an homage to the first Red Hook Crit, which also had a cobbled section.

But first, a bit of background, for the uninitiated: a criterium is a specific variety of bicycle race that typically occurs on a short, highly-technical circuit on closed-off city streets. The Red Hook Crit is unique in that riders are required to ride brakeless track (i.e. fixed-gear) bicycles, making it a unique hybrid of velodrome cycling and alleycat races: the course at the Brooklyn Navy Yard featured several near-90° corners, a cobbled chicane, and a killer S-curve that proved to be the downfall of many a contender. That, and the fact that the race takes place at night, per tradition. (Racing Towards Red Hook, a short documentary about the 2011 RHC, is a good primer).

This corner (the view looking north from “10” on the map below) turned out to be the bane of many a seasoned rider

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