London Cyclocross League: Wilmington

Waking up on Saturday, and then on Sunday, I realised that chances are my idea of photographing cyclocross racers pre and post race may have to wait until the beginning of the next season. There's no point in doing it when the conditions aren't right. This didn't stop me from turning up to the penultimate round of the London Cross League at Wilmington Grammar School.

Instead of the portraits I decided to shoot the race. Not for any reason, just for fun. But why on earth would I do things the same as everyone else? So instead of that I decided to 'get right up in yo grills' and shoot with a big octobox. Here's some of the results.

Cwm Rhaedr Redux

I've been threatening to do this for a while now, and here it actually is: a selection of offcuts and alternative edits from MBR magazine's Cwm Rhaedr Local Knowledge article.

This was a bit of an epic. It was a late night at the Rouleur Photo Annual launch party (leaving at around 12:30am, when I had to pick up MBR's senior staff writerAndy Waterman at 7am to make the long drive to Wales. This took around 5 hours, with the time behind the wheel ably aided by listening to Richard Herring's As It Occurs To Me podcasts.

I've mentioned the riding at Cwm Rhaedr in a previous post, but just in case you didn't: go there. This place is awesome. It's really short at just under 7km, but the descent is something you can keep coming back to. Admittedly it's not particularly challenging, but it is unbelievably fun. The drive back took a mere four hours, and we got home at around 9pm. Still, Wales and back in a day for 3 hours shooting is enough for any man. Anyway, on to the photos.

This is something I'd love to go back to with plenty of time and plenty of lighting. It was like something out of Lord of The Rings up there. This was run in black and white in the mag.

This perfectly crafted berm was on the descent and could be hit with some serious speed.

This wasn't exactly part of the trail, but we stopped off for the photo op. Strangely, I think this photo suits black and white as much as it suits colour.

This was at the beginning of the fun part of the climb when the dull fireroad ends and the fun slate singletrack hairpins begin. It'd be great to shoot this on a clear day with a tilt/shift lens, as there's a great waterfall behind those clouds.


I shot this specifically for the red ferns, but it was run in black and white.

So there you have it. In other news, it seems like my ankle is still a little on the shagged side, so it's off to A&E bright and early to make sure I haven't done any real lasting damage. Also, the Tour of Qatar's off, and it's looking like the Etoile De Besseges is in, that's in a couple of weeks time, but the cyclocross is this weekend, so look out for a post from that.

Sublime to the ridiculous

Two things of note have happened in the last couple of days. Firstly, the Broken Bells photo was published in NME and came out today, so go and buy it, please. Then write to the editor and tell them how much you like my photo specifically above all the other ones. Then go listen to Broken Bells here




And here's the image in its preferred crop:

Just so you know, that was lit with one umbrella to the right, using the very edge of the beam to make the light on the face a little less flat, then there was a speedlight shot at the wall to make the grey lines and shadows.

And now comes the stupid part. Out riding my BMX on ramps for the first time in many, many months, I slide out and roll my ankle. This is a result of an old injury from 2005, where I rolled it past 90 degrees and somehow managed to not break it, so now I have no tendons or ligaments left on the right side of my right foot and it can roll with barely any force applied to it. I usually wear an ankle brace when I ride as a result, but I couldn't find it when I got home. This is what happens when you think 'what's the worst that could happen?'

Well, I guess this could happen.

Then, I managed to outdo myself. After figuring out that I could probably ride home if I pedalled with my heal, my chain then snapped, sending me knees and elbow first to the tarmac. So, now stranded and injured in North London, 15 miles from home and with no public transport willing to take a bike, I had to stay at a friend's house in Camden. And then I woke up and found out we'd been snowed on again, making my journey home that much more fun. I was not a happy bunny. Luckily, I should be all healed up relatively quickly.

Testing, testing…

This is the result of a lights test shot late on Friday evening. The idea was going to be put into action for a series of portraits of cyclocross riders in a week or two, however, having shot it, there's a few tweaks to be made to how I want the images to turn out. A combination of this, and a couple of seriously tight gridded lights may do it.

The lighting idea I was trying here is firing a 1m wide octobox through a bedsheet, essentially creating a softbox the size of a double bed meaning an incredibly soft lightsource to compliment the ridiculously shallow depth of field (f1.8, if you're interested). Also, because I was standing in front of it, it gives the same shadowless effect as a ringflash, but with a different, much bigger catchlight in the eyes.

Ok, the geek-out's over, move along…

So there you go. Coming up soon is the re-edit of the shots from MBR's Cwm Rhaedr local knowledge shots, the portraits of cyclocrossers at the end of the month, and in February, the beginning of the road season with the Tour of Qatar (should anyone interesting turn up there).

Almost forgot, buy the next issue of NME to see my portrait of DJ Dangermouse/James Mercer colab Broken Bells. Albeit very, very small…

MBR February 2010

The new issue of MBR magazine has a feature shot by yours truly. It's the Local Knowledge piece I did in Wales. Here's some spreads in miniature, but I highly recommend you go buy the thing to appreciate the photos in their full glory. Stay tuned for a further post with some alternative processing of the shots. As the we were riding in low cloud, different processing suits different images. The opening shot was a blinder in colour, sadly the majority of shots worked better in B&W, so that's what was run. Ciao for now!

Tom

Triathletes?

As it's now 2010, I thought I’d tell you about my first shoot of 2009. This was with Olly Freeman for 220 Triathlon magazine. The idea was that I’d spend a day with Olly for a photo piece about his training regime. We were with him on a Sunday, which is, apart from some sprint intervals, his ‘easy’ day. He trains 6 days a week, with only Saturday off.

This portrait was shot just after Olly finished his first training block of the day.

Myself and my assistant (the Ginger Geordie BMX maestro himself, mr Steve Aitchison
were at Olly’s place in Eastbourne bright and early at 5:30am. We shot photos of him and his housemate stretching and eating breakfast before they headed out on a run with their triathlon club. The plan was for me to follow on a mountain bike and shoot as they went. It all started out very reasonably, but took a turn for the mental when they started doing their uphill intervals. This was one steep bit of fireroad they were running up, and as I was training for the Etape at the time, I was in pretty good shape. Even so, they were running up the thing faster than I could ride up it. Still, we’re talking Olympic-level athletes vs lil ol’ me, so I’ll give them that one.

Olly and his training partner set their heartrate monitors before another uphill sprint interval.

From there we went straight to the pool. The guys were using paddles on their hands so they didn’t have to use their legs to swim – because of the morning’s run, their legs were totally shot. They swam for about 2 or 3 hours, doing continuous lengths. There were one or two breaks for a word from their coach, but that was pretty much it.

Olly, taking a very short break from the swimming,

After the swim, it was back to Olly’s flat for lunch, Scrubs, a spot of Pro Evo Soccer, and then one of the most painful-looking massages I’ve ever seen. Seriously, if that masseur could had a sledgehammer lying about, I’m pretty sure she would have used it.

Cereal and Scrubs: the cornerstone of any elite athlete's training regime.

Sports massage: I'd rather have a 6'x6' rubgy player beat the crap out of me for 45 minutes.

The evening was a relatively relaxed affair, with just a gentle run on the Eastbourne seafront on the cards. My and my assistant bucked the healthy trend of the day by disappearing to Harry Ramsden’s for dinner, before setting up a photo on the freezing cold seafront, waiting for Olly to appear. Although not wanting to stop running, Olly gamely ran past the flashes and then jogged on the spot until we signalled him again. Top lad. Off we drove back to his to photograph him and his mates eating and watching TV in the evening.

At the end of it all, a nice healthy stir-fry and good company. That's pretty much what we all do of an evening, perhaps minus the 'healthy' part, anyway.

It was quite an experience to watch the sacrifices a top-level athlete has to make for their chosen career. The pro cyclists I’ve spoken to have always said they treat it as a job, but, rather than being chained to a desk for 8 hours a day, they just have to ride their bike for 6. In this case, however, the dedication was just that little bit more, confirming what I’d always suspected about triathletes: loonies and masochists the lot of them! However, when you get over the stupid jokes and the sweeping generalisations over their bike handling, you can’t help but respect the commitment that goes with the territory.