There’s a definite pattern to the locations I shoot at - it’s pretty much guaranteed it’ll be either a forest or a hill, or a mixture of the two. It’s very rare I really shoot anywhere else, so when I found out about the Red Bull Round Up, a two day event beginning at a disused movie studio set that’d been made up to look like 1930s Chicago, I was all over it. After all, it’s not often you get the chance to kick holes in polystyrene walls and rattle the handles of fake doors.
So apparently more than me and my Mum read this blog, as a number of people have been busting my balls (figuratively speaking) about updates. What can I say? It’s been a hectic month. Here’s a quick run-down of some of the things I’ve been up to: Read the rest of this entry »
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.
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).
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.
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.
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:
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.
