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It was a nice surprise to find out that one of my photographs won a prize in Rock Racing's Flickr Photo Contest. The image of Oscar Sevilla was taken on the HC ascent of Mt. Hamilton during Stage 3 of this year's Tour of California.

Provocatively Sevilla, Tyler Hamilton and Santiago Botero were out training on the race course (and clearly making a statement) just a few minutes ahead of the peloton.

The Rock Racing Venom kit is an electric blast of green and black straight out the pages of a superhero comic book and it truly rocks. I chose to submit the shot in black and white because I wanted to focus on Sevilla's composure. He looked so PRO climbing one of the last steep pitches at a good clip without a hint of difficulty.

Kyle Kuykendall's artistic shot won the full-kit grand prize from among nearly 500 contest entries. Congrats Kyle. Considering I had few opportunities to shoot the team, I'm pretty happy. I didn't bother to enter a great image of Mario Cipollini from the TOC prologue since the relationship with Rock had fizzled... pity.

I'd just add that Rock's obvious knack for merchandising is a designer's dream. They continue to suit the team out in fantastic race-specific variations (Harlem Rocks, Team Austin Crit). I'm sure it motivates the riders and can't hurt with the fans who've been snapping up RR kit from the web store.

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