Firemonkeyphoto

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.

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.