Dan Barham :: Mountain Bike Photography

While emptying out my wallet of the mountains of receipts I seem to generate on a weekly basis, I came across a card inviting me to check out the pics from the recent Kranked 7 premiere at Sea Otter.

Given it’s almost certainly the closest I’ll ever come to actually being on the cover of Bike Magazine, I thought I’d post this aesthetic master-class of modeling:

That’s right, I went for the good ol’ reliable horns.

Fortunately I wasn’t the only one making a fool of myself, here’s Chipps, editor of Singletrack magazine:

Chipps’ “Blue Steel” needs work.

More from the evening (including some real celebrities) are on the Bike Mag site.

Even though it’s officially The Best Job In The World Ever, there’s still the occasional time you can find me grumbling about the weight of my camera bag, the bad light, the location etc. Hey, I’m British, grumbling is what we do.

This weekend was not one of those times. I headed up to Lillooet, BC to guinea-pig a never-before-attempted heli-drop on one of the local peaks, and was treated to a stunning 2100m descent from the very summit to the river valley below. Days don’t get much better than this.

Taxi for six, dead on time

Waiting for me to pick up my jaw

“Can you see your house from here?”
“Nope”
“Me neither”

The best sound in the world (video © Brian Earle)

The places I get myself into (photo © Brian Earle)

Huge thanks to Chris and Kevin for showing us around, Scott from CC Helicopters for the ride up and as always Brian for excellent photo-slutting.

My younger (yet substantially taller) brother, Nick, came over from good ol’ Blighty for a quick visit, to hang out and generally see what I’ve been making a fuss about all this time. We spent most of the week doing a whole lot of not very much, but I couldn’t resist the urge to drag him along to a quick photoshoot I’d arranged with Team NSMB.com’s Jerry Willows on the North Shore; if nothing else, he’d be a useful assistant (I have a bad habit of conscripting anyone foolish enough to express a passing interest into hauling around gear for me).

Nick brought his own little camera with him and managed to capture the kind of behind-the-scenes shots I always mean to take, but never have time or remember.

Here’s one of my images, (albeit not one of the best from the day, but you know the score with that by now):

And here’s some of the setup I had going on for it:

I love this ladder, it’s one of my favourite ‘accessory gadgets’. Super cheap at Canadian Tire, this badboy folds up nice and small (small enough to strap to a bag if I’m feeling up to the balance / walking challenge) yet rigid enough to not be a problem 12′ up a tree.

Another strong favourite is the ball-ended bungee - why carry a bunch of tripods around for flashes when nature brings the supports herself?

More flash (yeah yeah, I know) in the foreground, me probably showing Jerry how I’d chopped his head off that frame and a bunch of gear carelessly discarded on a nearby stump. I really need to stop doing that, at the end of this shoot I realised I was down one wide-angle lens, put down somewhere in a thirty yard stretch of undergrowth. Nothing like kicking through ferns in dying light trying to find $800 worth of gear.

By the magic of those tiny little cameras (why can’t mine do this?) here’s a couple of videos, too:

Of course, thanks to my bro Nick for the photos and videos (even though I’m his older brother and consequently entitled to everything of his).

I’ve been hanging out annoying the North Shore locals now for over a year, and without blowing my own horn too much (not to mention inviting the inevitable irony-related crash), my riding’s progressed leaps and bounds from my first tentative pedal strokes of 2007. My current bike, a Trek Session 77, is beautifully plush and responsive, but a tad on the ‘bomb proof’ end of the weight scale and consequently quite a handful on the tight, technical trails that seem de rigueur out here.

I decided to take my new found (over)confidence and trade ‘down’ to slightly smaller bike - six inches travel instead of seven, a few pounds the other side of forty, and landed myself what seems to be a popular bike - the Specialized SX Trail 2:

Basking in the golden light of an Interior BC sunset

In the couple of weeks I’ve had it, I’ve had the chance to rip it up in a whole range of terrain, from wet, rooty Shore trails to the dusty buff berms of the BC Interior, and I couldn’t be happier. The lighter weight and shorter travel makes the bike leap around under me while I flick it exactly where it needs to go, and the extra granny ring makes pedalling up much less of a chore. To prove I actually do ride bikes occasionally, I’ve even managed to procure the most rare of footage - me the other side of the lens, hitting what I thought was scary-big log gap, but in video-assisted retrospect now looks rather uninspiring:

It was totally bigger in real life, honest

Not that you can really tell it’s me thanks to the blurry video and full-face helmet, maybe I should’ve poached a shot of Berrecloth riding his and claimed it was me…

(A thousand thanks to Cam at NSMB.com and Tony at Specialized for making the magic happen and being full-on stand-up kinda guys)

It’s North Shore Ripper racing time again, and a couple of weeks ago was the second in the series ( I missed the first due to Sea Otter).  Even in the last year I’ve been here, there seems to have been a jump in the number of photographers out to capture the day’s events, and they’re all keen to snap every rider on the way down, so the ‘people’ aspect of the race was sure to be well documented.  I wanted a different perspective, so concentrated more on the textures and terrain of the muddy and root-filled course.

Ooh, the textures

Wet and slimy…

… with added off-camber roots.

Obsession:Bikes’ James Wilson - happy architect of the ‘misery’

Last night saw the North Vancouver premiere of Kranked 7: The Cackle Factor, the latest awesome flick in the longstanding line of bike movies from Radical Films. I was lucky enough to shoot for one of the days of filming, and do a bunch of work with the NSMBA, who were organising the event, so managed to sneak a spot in before the film to show a quick slideshow of my work. Check it out:

I have to admit I was super-nervous about how it’d go down, given it’s quite a different vibe from the movie, plus I was running it straight from my laptop and was fully expecting it to go horribly wrong at any moment. Luckily everything went to plan and people seemed to like it, and I didn’t kill the buzz for the forthcoming movie.

Many thanks for the Vetiver guys and Jeff from Domino Records for letting me use their beautiful music, plus the NSMBA and Bjørn Enga for letting me ride their coat-tails.

As I mentioned previously, I managed to miss my flight back from San Francisco earlier this week, mostly due to a *slight* underestimation of Californian road traffic, but also because I nipped back to the pub where I almost certainly lost my favourite jacket, a Sombrio Vapor from last year. Naturally it wasn’t there, so come Monday morning I found myself down the cost of another flight, an extra stay in a hotel room and one waterproof coat. Bummer.

Fortunately, the fantastic people at Sombrio are just down the road, so when I called them up and pitched my sob story they were characteristically awesome and agreed to help me out in no time at all. To make things even sweeter, this year’s Vapor features a print “inspired by aerial photography of Manchester, UK”.  That’ll be my home town, then… maybe it was meant to be.

Extra special thanks to Andrea at Sombrio for sorting me out.

Last weekend was that of the bike season opening Sea Otter Classic, down in Monterey, California. I went down to enjoy myself, under the guise of working hard and covering the event for Bikemagic.com and NSMB.com, along with a whole bevvy of other publications I’ll be forcing my shots on in coming weeks.

The event itself was great as always - it’s always fun to meet up with old and new friends alike, check out new gear and of course the varied racing on offer. I shot all four days and posted daily reports, tying all my work together with a desaturated, earthy look that I intended to provide some continuity between each day, if not to just set my shots apart from other photos bouncing around the web. Hopefully it worked.

Here’s a few shots that were close to hand while writing this:

Ryan Trebon and Sam Schultz battle it out for the Men’s Short Track title

Brian Lopes looking smooth as ever

Fast & low around the slalom course

You can see more photos, plus a mini report on each day on the following sites:

• Bikemagic.com
• NSMB.com

Everything was going swimmingly, right up to the last couple of hours, when I managed to miss my flight, the last plane to Vancouver out of SFO, and was forced to stay the night in an airport hotel room. Whoops, there goes the profit.

After a brief tour around various shops and art exhibitions, I’ve got a handful of framed prints left. I’m sure they’ll sell in good time, but I’d rather get ‘em out and sold before I do something stupid like stumble around and trash them like a clumsy oaf.

Each one of these prints is identical to those I sell through this site, being an 18″ x 12″ fine art Gicleé print on textured William Turner paper, signed and hand framed by the fantastic people at Biltons Framing in North Van. Each picture has a custom-matched surround that really pops the colours and “Conservation Clear” glass that protects the print from UV-induced fading - both print and glass are both rated for 99 years. Whether the combination means 198 years or 9801 years (99 * 99) protection is somewhat of an unknown factor; chances are though it’ll be around for a good few years.

Normally it’s $139 for the print only, and should you want to get it custom-framed to this standard you’d be looking at an extra $180, a grand total of $319. I had been selling these for $300, but for a quick sale I’m willing to let these last ones for only $250.

Here’s what I have available:

Andreu Lacondeguy at Sea Otter, CA

Guy watching the Tour De Gastown in Vancouver Downtown

Steve Makin riding the surreal terrain of Parys Mount, Anglesey, UK - SOLD

Summer singletrack in Alberta

Shipping around the world may be a little tricky / expensive but I’m game if you are, and you can pay by a number of means including by credit card and Paypal. First come first served, when they’re gone they’re gone!

I’m pretty tough on most of my camera gear, not through any malicious intent nor any real desire to spend more than I have to get the job done, but simply because more often than not, I’m shooting in some pretty crappy conditions. Rain, damp, mud, grit and grime - they all conspire against me to fog lenses, short batteries and gunk up controls, and no place has my local sales rep rubbing his hands with glee like the North Shore.

I’ve always shot primarily with a Canon 1D Mark 2, a true tank of a body that plows through adverse conditions like a steam train, with barely a mark on her to show for it. I’ve dropped it, I’ve subjected it to deluges, left it in a puddle of mud, and it’s still running as sweet as the day I got it (you should note at this point I’m superstitiously touching every piece of wood I can find). It’s still my go-to gear when I need to get the job done, but sometimes, it’s just too heavy, too bulky or just plain too conspicuous to use - thirty mile backcountry epics are hard enough at the best of times, and I need all the weight savings I can get.

So it’s new body time.  I had a quick browse through the Canon catalogue, closed my eyes and stuck a pin in the page, and came up with a 40D - their top-of-the-line ‘prosumer’ model. It’s got a bunch of features that really show the advance of technology, like the 3″ screen, 14-bit colour capture and semi-decent weather sealing, and I’m sure it’ll perform admirably as a backup.  Of course, I’m not stupid enough to roll into a paying gig without trying it out first, so when I got a call from NSMB’s Jerry Willows to go shoot a trail he’d built, it seemed like the perfect test scenario for shots in the dank, damp forest, like this:

The result? It worked like a camera should, and hasn’t kicked the bucket yet. Sounds like a success*.

Oh, and if you were wondering about what I meant about being hard on gear, here’s my poor abused fisheye after I knocked ninety percent of the mud, grit and sticks off it:

Whoops.

* Note to the Camera Gear Karma Gods, if you’re reading this, please don’t take it as an invite to trash everything in my bag; I’m poor enough already.