The Deerstalker Adventure Race & Fast Flashing0
neil posted in Travel on March 22nd, 2009
The Mighty Deerstalker 10k is an adventure run created by someone with an especially sick sense of humour. When considering how to route the race through Innerleithen, they took the easy route from a traffic management point of view and used the river. When putting in a route up a steep hill.. they saw a scree slope and routemarked it. Going downhill? They used a downhill mountainbike course and knotted ropes. They then went on to bridge a perfectly fine gully with thin tree trunks and force you to cross them, at the top of the aforementioned scree slope.
Half the fun of the race is that it takes place at dusk and it gets dark pretty quickly. This means that on the second hill, you ascend and descend by headtorch light. Which means if you are making pictures, its time to break out the flashguns. I used a pair of bare strobes and an Exposure Enduro light for focus.
The problem is, I wanted to cover multiple locations with the strobes, which means breaking down and moving on rapidly, which is harder to do with flashgear. It requires a level of organisation and a definite system of item A goes into pocket B at all times. The trick is also to leave as much of the system assembled as possible, and thats something I’ll be looking a bit more into in the near future. How few pieces can I move flash gear in? The new pocketwizards are interesting in that regard, but I’ll make do with what I have for starters and if I come up with anything brilliant, I will share it here.
As it was I never reached the second location, I met a chap from London who was being helped down the hill by two other racers, I had a bright torch and warm clothes in my bag, so I stopped to help them back to the race village. Which made for a different, but still interesting, type of evening.
Little moments of the Meadows Marathon0
neil posted in Travel on March 21st, 2009
Everyone needs fans like those.
4cross0
neil posted in Photos, bikes, Neil, Trails, 5Dmk2, roughriderz on March 17th, 2009
Spent monday with 4cross riders Phil and Dave from www.roughriderz.co.uk (not to be confused with 4x riders) who ride 4 wheeled downhill mountainbikes. “The Shredder” at Ae has been designed with modifications for these bikes. More later!
Fairies of the night0
neil posted in Photos, Neil, Trails, 5Dmk2 on March 12th, 2009
Build trails. Eat cake. At night.
Climbing in the rain0
neil posted in Travel on March 8th, 2009
The weather Gods were not impressed by our 4am start, to the tune of significant and constant rainfall. We had to head further north than planned to find anything climbable and finished up in Glencoe. We walked up to the corrie in the half light, taking a considerable detour and leading some of those who followed us astray. The snow was deep off the trail and Fraser frequently dropped in to waist deep in front of me. With the benefit of his hindsight I could make more efficient progress and only infrequently lost my footing. The rain was unrelenting as Fraser and Ewan geared up and began to hack up the easy, but only climbable route. Visibility dropped as they started up and I headed back to the car, a good book and a warm sleeping bag. Four or so hours later they returned and we headed to the Clachaig inn. I continued wearing the sleeping bag and being an excellent place, no-one batted an eyelid. Photos decidedly “meh” but my 5D weathered the storm so I’m happy about that.
Glen Lednock & the sports climbing that never happened0
neil posted in Photos, Neil, Climbing, 5Dmk2 on March 1st, 2009
Fraser, David and I drove into Glen Lednock in pitch darkness and set up camp so we could go bouldering. The problem was the boulders were at the wrong scale. Often we would see a wonderful looking boulder in the distance and head towards it, only to realise it was head height or less. After some dispiriting tramping around we found two sensibly sized boulders which Fraser and Dave set about.
I wanted to try something a little different this time rather than just tossing hard light at the climbers from various angles. I schlepped a 46″ umbrella and badass lightstand up and down and across the glen to provide a big soft source. A flash bracket allowed me to affix two speedlights where they could shoot into the umbrella to give me enough power to work against daylight levels. I see there is a three way bracket for this sort of nonsense and its on my shopping list for next time. I’m pretty convinced that doubling flashes up on a power hungry light is the way to go. It means less lightstands to move, faster recycle times, slower battery reload intervals and much lighter and more flexible than battery studio gear (although I’d LOVE to field test a Profoto acute 7b….).
The umbrella light, with only two strobes, only really “cut it” when it was slightly overcast, but it provided a different look for these images. If we’re shooting bouldering and not route climbing and the weather report is for still air, I might bring the big brolly out again. As it was I spent a large time rolling huge rocks around to secure the lightstand to the ground. The bouldering problem we found seemed quite tricky and it was good to see Fraser having to pull out all the stops to make a move. The background of Glen Lednock was nothing to sneeze at. A good moment in a good location makes my life easy!
We then went to a roadside sports crag and I’ve been asked to say no more about it, save for Fraser’s manparts were wounded by his harness and the rock was really strange.
