June 20th, 2013

Strathpuffer 2013 portraits0
neil posted in Photos, bikes on May 16th, 2013

 
The film sat in an insulated drinks bottle for months. The opinion of people who know things was that when the film came unspooled in the camera and I opened the back, I had nothing but a prayer of the photos surviving. Three friends helped me have an attempt at developing the film. I was amazed to see ten surviving images from a hard mountainbike race. Now I can look into the faces of my friends and remember how I felt.
The other images from the film are here.

Scottish Cyclocross on Mull0
neil posted in Photos, bikes, 5Dmk2 on February 15th, 2013

Serendipity strikes0
neil posted in Photos, bikes, 5Dmk2 on July 22nd, 2012

Bristol has been waiting for the weather to turn and let it have its summer fun. The jetstream finally shifted north and the sun came out for the harbour festival, my initial plan for this weekend. Until I met a horde of BMX riders and asked what they were up to.
BSD, a BMX company, had organised a ‘jam’ and riders from nearby cities including Cardiff and Portsmouth had come to Bristol to ride several street spots as well as Bedminster skate park. Bedminster skate park is a location I have been wanting to shoot since I first found it. To be able to do so with the backdrop of so many BMXers enjoying the sunshine was perfect.

The first street spot was very near the city center and passersby and festivalgoers joined the crowd. Amusingly the first comment on my flickr photos was unhappy about using this historic derelict paving slab slope for freestyle BMX. Obviously I have a lot to learn about Bristol’s architectural highlights.

Ben Alder0
neil posted in bikes, Trails on June 7th, 2012

How it works *sometimes*0
neil posted in bikes, Neil, Trails, 5Dmk2, Night, Bristol on December 24th, 2011

The idea for the above picture popped into my head almost unbidden. This is how realising that idea came to pass.
Last winter I was mucking about in Leigh Woods shooting ultra-long exposure images of myself, inspired by Alejandro Chaskielberg’s images made by moonlight and published in Burn magazine. I never really made any good images, but became acquianted with the effect and technique. The bright lights of Bristol painted everything an unusual orange, unlike the uncontaminated skies in Alejandro’s work, and I didn’t really have a subject.
The idea went in my mental toolbox.  It was only when the pumptrack was built under the Brunel way flyover that I found a use for it. The image in my head looked quite different. I didn’t anticipate how bright the floodlights would be, relative to the bright mountainbike lights. We used two powerful exposure mountainbike lights to produce the shape hovering above the trail. While setting up I knew I would be a long way from the pumptrack, stuck up on a ramp up to the flyover, so I had a friend assisting and keeping an eye on my gear. She actually found the angle from which this photo was taken, speeding things up immensely. I set up my tripod, dialled in the exposure at around 90 seconds or three laps of the pumptrack. Unfortunately the rear light of the bike did nothing to illuminate the “away from camera” legs of the track so our tame mountainbiker had to ride the track twice forwards and once backwards to get complete coverage. He still persistently laps me when we ride the track, I guess he got in a lot of practice while I sorted the balance of natural, flash and bike light out.
After sorting out these details we made the above image, I wanted my flashes to freeze the rider in the dark under the flyover (top left) and then his headtorch light join with the light of the pump track to make a continuous loop. This was possibly a little unreasonable as it meant riding onto the pumptrack at an awkward angle while looking in the completely wrong direction. Because he hadn’t managed that minor miracle, you can see a gap in the above image. So I asked for another go, however three bmx’ers had shown up and riding the track backwards is considered impolite to other users. They turned out to be polite and we managed to make the picture when they were having a break. In the end I actually quite like having them sat semi-motionless amongst the ethereal tracery over the track itself. The flashes fired badly on the last go and the picture worked better when I cropped out the ‘frozen’ rider. Sometimes you get that better picture by going with the flow, just a little bit.

Bristol Bikefest0
neil posted in Photos, bikes, Neil, Trails on June 7th, 2011

The old trails of Ashton Court held their own for the Bristol Bike Fest. Six thousand bike-passes were made over their scarred faces. The brand new trail showed its first sign of wear but was addictively fun to ride (post race) all the same. I’m looking forward to less guilt about riding in the wet and a lot more pump, jump and rail. Not to everyones taste, but there is Leigh Woods, 50 Acre, the Orchard and more for those who fancy a bit of rough & rooty .

Brighton Hardcourt Bike Polo Tournament0
neil posted in Photos, bikes, Neil on May 12th, 2011

 

More here: All Pictures

Tranent Triathlon0
neil posted in Photos, bikes, 5Dmk2 on March 24th, 2010

Sunday was spent crouching on a windy hill far outside Tranent. I hate reams of identical pictures, shot from a fixed position, the “insert rider here” images that result from unimaginative race photography. However I had too much stuff and was too far from any other good location to move. The mantra in my head was pure Joe McNally “Do your re-shoot now, if you are long go wide, mix it up”. The situation was too backlit to use ambient light effectively so my aperture was tied to my strobe. I had to build variety by changing lenses and composition. Teleconverting my 70-200mm and going to 16mm for the other extreme. It was’nt a peaceful afternoon and there were a lot of experiments that did’nt work out, however I was much happier with the pictures in post than when I was making them.

O Me of Little Faith0
neil posted in Photos, bikes, Neil, Sports, 5Dmk2 on March 16th, 2010

I’d left Dave (Zzathras) and Dave (Davefitch) further down the hill and headed upwards through the forest. The pack and head in my backpack making me sweat through the Buffalo that had been cold back in the flat. The juniours were descending already and I had’nt found a worthy spot. I wanted views, distance and perspective. Just to wet my whistle (and rest my legs) I set the head up and made a few exposures of the first juniour riders at an “ok” looking corner. Camera hard against the ground to keep the course tape out of the way, focus locked and panning. I cursed myself for a lazy fool and packed the kit up again to resume climbing to the vantage point I was sure awaited. Why was I wasting my time with this “small fry” stuff, I should be making “epic” pictures somewhere! In hindsight, of course, I much preferred these images to some of the epics I tried to set up. It was too soon I reached the top of the course, empty handed and sweating so I could’nt see through my glasses. There was no epic vantage point. I tried one location slightly further down and got peanuts. Frustrated, I decided to go with the only shot I had in my head. At the very bottom of the course was a well built jump sure to attract spectators. I could light the jumping rider and pull back to include the fans.
When I got there, I discovered fans were thin on the ground, but I was knackered and out of lucozade and haribo. Screw it, I would work the angles and try to find a picture.
The result: Meh. However I’m “inspired” to keep lugging that darn light to other DH races and see if I can do better.

Sheer bloody persistence0
neil posted in Photos, bikes, Neil, 5Dmk2, Night on February 25th, 2010

I had this photograph in my head for months. Every time we rode to this staircase on the way out to the Pentlands, I would poke myself about it. I was certain there was a good picture to be made. I tried a few times to get myself and another party out there for a shoot, but it was only last night I succeeded. This is a pretty frequent occurance, finding a location or visualising a photograph long before it can be taken. They don’t always work out, angles don’t always fall the way you remember them and locations can lose their magic in the wrong light. This was’nt quite the photo I originally imagined, the light was far better than I had remembered and fell perfectly for the lighting technique I used.

I used my big Elinchrom Ranger pack, tucked into my bag with the head on a tripod on a steep and greasy slope. The final photograph used a gridded reflector to allow the Exposure Enduro on the bike’s handlebars to fill the bottom of the scene. I got focus by getting Simon to shine the light in his face until I managed to dial in the manual focus (using live view). The staircase was otherwise pitch black, preventing the orange sodium lights contaminating the bike’s light or the flash light.

The thing that really made the photo possible, however, was the titular persistence. Simon rode the staircase about twenty times, tirelessly wheeling his bike back up the staircase, stopping halfway so I could check focus and then cheerfully repeating. Only once did he stumble on the descent, but that landed him nearly over the wall. Each time I needed to change the power of the flash I had to run a steep marathon of brambles, thorns and a slick slope which could only be climbed by lunging for tree stumps near its summit and clawing up through the snow and mud. This process took around five minutes, the flash power was changed three times and its pocketwizard ran out of battery once. The exposure was made by bending backwards over the wall and tucking the camera hard onto my left shoulder. It was only marginally possible to see through the viewfinder. We tried triggering the flash while Simon was partway down the descent, but it seems easier to find him in the top image. One hundred and fourty eight exposures were made over two hours for the images you see here. I’m glad we made them, it is good to get them out of my head.

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