Seb Rogers: mountain bike photography

Back to basics

Nikon D40X, 55-200mm f/4-5.6 VR, 1/500sec f/8 @ ISO200

One of the downsides of shooting professionally is that it's easy to get stuck in a bit of a visual rut, particularly if the subject matter in front of your lens is more or less the same, most of the time.

I love bikes, I love riding and I love shooting bikes and riding. But sometimes I miss just being able to take pictures for no particular reason other than the joy of slicing a split second of time and converting some photons into ones and zeroes.

So when I had the opportunity to sail on a classic 1930s Thames barge for two days last week, I took along my trusty D40X and a couple of lenses and spent some time being a happily oblivious amateur snapper. In situations like this I still like to be able to tell a story with my pictures (maybe it's a habit that's too deeply ingrained, after years of shooting editorial, to step away from), but there's absolutely no pressure of any kind. No client, no deadline, no competition. No prizes for originality, either... but who cares?

Click, chimp, smile. Bliss.

Nikon D40X, 10.5mm f/2.8, 0.8sec f/2.8 @ ISO1600, handheld

Nikon D40X, 55-200mm f/4-5.6 VR, 1/1600sec f/8 @ ISO400

What tyre for...

...a magazine cover shoot?

Always ask the locals...

Naaaaah, mate. Racing Ralphs on wet Peak gritstone? You want some Nobbly Nicks...

Vive le backflip x-up

One of the things I've always enjoyed about shooting for MBUK is that it's such a broad church. No other bike mag in the world, as far as I'm aware, gives page space to cross-country, downhill, freeride, dirt, street, trials, touring and just about any other variety of riding you care to come up with... in almost every single issue. It means there's never a dull moment and I get to work with world-class riders from every side of the sport.

The August 2008 issue of the mag features seven pages of my photos of top French slopestyle rider Cris Hatton's recent visit to the UK. Cris is a fearless innovator in competition and has built his reputation on the back of seemingly impossible trick combos. Shooting aerial manouevres like these makes a refreshing change from wheels-on-the-ground shoots, and forces me to think in different ways. Vive la difference!

Nikon D3, 16mm f/2.8, 1/250sec f/5 @ ISO200, two radio slaves

The lesser spotted Seb

As any magazine art editor who's ever tried to track down a headshot of me will know, I'm notoriously camera-shy. Pictures of me are rarer than pictures of the abominable snowman; pictures of me riding a bike are scarcer still.

So here, inspired partly by fellow bike photographer Dan Barham's recent blog vid showing him actually riding a bike, is proof that I do occasionally turn a pedal in anger (although I only usually open my mouth that wide when I'm catching flies for a little protein boost towards the end of a long ride...).

Buff, dusty singletrack courtesy of my Mendip backyard; self-portrait courtesy of my stunt-double D40X and an hour or so telling myself 'that was great... can you do it again?'

Nikon D40X, 10.5mm f/2.8, 1/30sec f/18 @ ISO100, built-in flash (-1 stop), fisheye distortion corrected in Capture NX

Big sky

The Summer 2008 issue of What Mountain Bike has more than a dozen pages of my photos illustrating their comprehensive Exmoor route guide. This kind of shoot always fills me with a mix of dread and anticipation, although I'm pretty happy with the results from the past two or three I've done.

Two days to ride and shoot three routes puts the pressure on. It's rather like doing a mobile shoot over 20 or 30 miles, but simply recording the day isn't enough for me. I'm always after something inspirational; some pictures that'll make someone want to go out and ride their bike. It's surprisingly hard to do that, and to do it consistently enough to provide 14 pages of strong images. Yep, it's a challenge. I'm sure I'm ageing as a result...

Anyhoo, I hadn't ridden on Exmoor for a few years, despite the fact that it's only a couple of hours' drive away (must be something to do with my increasing antipathy towards driving to ride - in the two hours it'd take me to get to Exmoor I could have finished a ride on my own mini Exmoor in my backyard. But I digress). What particularly struck me about it was the feeling of being exposed under a vast dome of sky. It's not just a feeling, either - Exmoor's height, barren moorland and location in the firing line of Atlantic-fuelled weather fronts means it's not a place you want to be caught out in bad weather.

The sunshine-and-heavy-showers we had on day one of the two-day shoot was perfect for capturing the weather's Jekyll-and-Hyde character. Landscapes with big expanses of sky are hard to pull off convincingly, but the constantly-changing light show was providing enough drama to reduce Cass and Dan's riding to bit-parts. Here are some of my favourite pics that didn't make the mag's cut:

Nikon D300, 50-150mm f/2.8, 1/80sec f/10 @ ISO200

Nikon D300, 10.5mm f/2.8, 1/500sec f/11 @ ISO200

Nikon D300, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/400sec f/10 @ ISO200

Fall guy

That'll be me, then...

The results of my recent falling-into-the-bushes-in-the-name-of-art incident are now in print, in the form of new bike mag Shift. Worth a look, I reckon.

Nikon D40X, 10.5mm f/2.8, 1/13sec f/22 @ ISO200. Processed in Capture NX to correct fisheye distortion

The gremlins have got at this pic, so that if you click on it to open it in a new window it's too big with the wrong resolution (translation: it looks awful). I'll fix it if I get the chance...

They shoot cars, don't they?

Monday morning dragging a little? Relieve the tedium by shooting a commercial for Subaru...

(It's just a bit of fun, of course. Although, given the extent to which car manufacturers increasingly rely on CGI instead of actual photons to create ads, the irony of Subaru's publicity stunt is probably not lost on commercial car photographers).

Where's Seb?

... he's developing in the darkroom. Hurhurhurhur... snigger...

That was the running joke at high school after I'd dusted the cobwebs off the school darkroom, coaxed the enlarger back to life and spent many a happy lunch hour filling my nostrils with the acrid smell of fixer. Hilarious, huh?

These days, of course, I don't need to disappear into a darkened room for hours at a time to make a few prints. On a recent photo course I found myself with a spare five minutes, so I ran off some close-cropped shots of bits of bike and spray as Mike splashed through a Quantock stream crossing for the x hundredth time. And then it occurred to me that they might work rather well in mono. So I processed and toned them in Bibble (Tri-X in T-Max for 9 minutes at 75F and 'printed' on Agfa Multicontrast Premium grade 0, in case anyone's interested), and here they are:

Nikon D3, 80-200mm f/2.8, 1/2000sec f/3.2 @ ISO2000

Nikon D3, 80-200mm f/2.8, 1/2500sec f/2.8 @ ISO1600

Funnily enough we'd been talking about shooting mono, and whether it's better to shoot with the end result - black and white or colour - in mind, or just convert later. I tend to subscribe to the view that the best mono images are 'seen' at the capture stage, but that doesn't rule out a succesful conversion later.

I kinda miss that smell, though.

Hurhurhur...

Hello sky, hello ground

Mountain bike photography isn't without its risks - and not always the ones you'd expect. See that guy in the orange jacket falling into the bushes? That's me, that is...

See, it all started with a Manfrotto magic arm attached to the bike, my D40X with fisheye and Pocket Wizard transmitter attached to the magic arm, and me running alongside with an infrared remote and slave flash. It's surprisingly hard to point the remote in roughly the right direction, the flash in exactly the right direction, time the shots to match pedal strokes and still have time to keep half an eye on where your feet are.

Or perhaps not that surprising, after all. Hmm, let's see... what could possibly go wrong with this setup...?

Yep, I got the shots. Eventually.

Quantocks gallery

The Quantocks* is one of my favourite places to ride. From the point of view of coming back with good pictures, that's a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I have a good idea of where the best bits are. On the other hand, my memories of countless great rides tend to inflate my image expectations to unrealistic levels. I'm my own worst enemy...

Still, my recent two-day shoot for What Mountain Bike's new 14-page route guide yielded a bumper crop of pictures that are probably some of my best to date from this location. Here's a small selection with a loose stream crossing theme (water is to the Quantocks what ladder drops are to the North Shore). For more, check out the May 2008 issue of the mag.

Nikon D300, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/250sec f/7.1 @ ISO200, single radio slave

Nikon D300, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/125 sec f/5.6 @ ISO400, single radio slave

Nikon D300, 10.5mm f/2.8 (corrected for distortion in Capture NX), 1/250sec f/5.6 @ ISO200, single radio slave

* Reading this outside the UK and never heard of it? I'm not surprised. The Quantocks is a small range of hills in the southwest of the UK overlooking the Bristol Channel. The Alps they most certainly aren't, but the singletrack's world class.

If it's got pedals...

Variety is good. Recently I had the chance to shoot stills and video for the launch of Vibe's new Turbo Twist - a Green Machine derivative that combines Formula One-inspired gokart looks with pedal power and joystick controls. The Turbo Twist's sole purpose in life is big skids, big slides and big grins... and who can argue with that?

(Thanks to Matt Skinner for his invaluable video editing skills. And no thanks to the British weather, for turning the video shoot into a time-pressured, wet and cold experience. No surprises there, then...)

Nikon D300, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/250sec f/7.1 @ ISO200, single radio slave

(Oops. Google video seems to have converted the original widescreen 16:9 format into a standard 4:3. I'm not sure why this is - if you want to see the video as it should look check out the Turbo Twist website.)

Cranky

While I was in California last year shooting What Mountain Bike's March '08 cover and feature on the new Specialized S-Works FSR, I also had the opportunity to visit Laguna Beach-based component manufacturer Crank Brothers. What Mountain Bike had commissioned me to shoot a feature on the company, focussing on their radical new wheelset.

Nikon D2X, 85mm f/1.4, 1/125sec f/2.8 @ ISO400

Company profiles can be tough to shoot well, and Crank Brothers presents a particularly knotty challenge. It's a very design-focussed company - something that's obvious in everything from office decor and layout to the minimalist simplicity of their product range. Other magazines have featured the Crank setup before, but I wanted to do something different.

In typically quirky Crank Brothers fashion, the company's meeting room features a ping-pong table. It's been used in photoshoots before, but I noticed how the overhead fluorescent lights cast a particularly attractive soft light.

Fluorescent lights don't get a good press - they flicker, and if you don't get the white balance nailed they turn everything a nasty shade of green. But there was something about the light over the Crank boardroom table that was really attractive. So I asked for a big sheet of white paper, and set to making use of the Crank product lineup's bright colours and clean shapes:

Nikon D2X, 50mm f/1.8, 1/80sec f/2.8 @ ISO400

Nikon D2X, 50mm f/1.8, 1/80sec f/2.8 @ ISO400

All that was needed was a gentle white balance tweak during RAW processing, and I had the clean, high-end look I was after. And not a studio light in sight.

A cautionary tale

One of the things I've enjoyed recently is shooting the occasional portrait. I'm not naturally the world's most gregarious person and the people I'm shooting are neither professional models nor - except, possibly, within the bike world - celebs, so I have to work hard at establishing a rapport to get the shots I want. Multi-tasking is the order of the day; not only do I have the usual technical considerations to worry about, but my subject is usually looking for some direction from me too. Makes for an interesting change.

Nikon D2X, 50mm f/1.8, 1/160sec f/2.8 @ ISO200, two radio slaves

This shot of trials and freeride legend Hans Rey is currently running over a whole page in What Mountain Bike. Hans is a seasoned pro when it comes to shoots and needed relatively little direction, but he was distracted by the need to pack for a flight to the UK that afternoon and I was all too conscious of the time ticking away. So it didn't help much that both my flashguns appeared determined to play up...

I couldn't work out what the problem was. I'd charged the batteries the previous night - they were fresh and I'd only taken a dozen shots or so before one set died completely. I put a fresh set in, but it wasn't long before they were recycling sluggishly too. I struggled on as best I could, aware that Hans was keen to get on. Despite all the hassle, I like this shot - I think it's my favourite of all my pictures in this issue of the mag.

But the problem persisted. For a week I struggled with batteries dying prematurely. I just couldn't understand it - perhaps they were just exhausted? It wasn't until after I returned to the UK that, in an idle moment while I was unpacking, I happened to read the specs on the back of my battery chargers. And discovered, to my horror, that they weren't dual voltage-compatible.

I'd plugged 240V chargers into a 110V supply and, in effect, fried my batteries. Ooops.

Two hundred quids' worth of new, dual voltage charger and new batteries later, I'm back in business. It was an expensive mistake, but it could've been worse - lack of power could've cost me the shoot.

And the moral of the story? Take nothing for granted. I'd assumed that all my chargers would work in the US, and I was wrong. And always have a backup plan. My untouched Duracell AAs would have bought me enough time to bag the shot and get to the nearest 7-11 for a new supply...

Number 42 to Snowdon via Quantoxhead

For a freelance photographer, commissioned shoots are rather like buses - you wait for ages, then three come along at once. Or, in my case, five. Five shoots in a little over a week is as busy as I've probably ever been, and certainly more than busy enough for January. The weather's uncertain (but mostly dull and cold), the trails aren't exactly buff (mostly sludge, in fact), and I'm not in the best shape after a winter battling one virus after another. The next few days are likely to be a blur of packing the car, driving, riding, shooting, driving, unpacking, grabbing a few hours sleep and then repeating.

Still, it's good to be out there shooting, and I'll certainly be fitter this time next week than I am right now. The blog is bound to be neglected for the duration, so talk quietly amongst yourselves until I'm back in circulation again...

This is why

I cut my mountain biking teeth on the rolling chalk hills of the South Downs nearly two decades ago. This gently undulating landscape on the UK's south coast isn't, at first glance, a natural home for mountain biking. The highest point is less than 600 feet above sea level, there's precious little in the way of rocky or technical riding, and the views are subtly expansive rather than obviously dramatic. But I like it as a place. After thousands of miles and hundreds of hours riding there, I have a deeply rooted appreciation of the way the light plays across the hills and the English Channel beyond. It's magical.

Nikon D2X, 12-24mm f/4, 1/160sec f/7.1 @ ISO100

It's also the 'home' of British ovine cartoon legend Mint Sauce and his creator Jo Burt. Jo and I have shared countless rides across the hills that Mint also rides, in all weathers, throughout the year. Snow, hail, driving rain, rivulets of summer sweat; death marches through the cloying mud, endless trails of summer dust.

Nikon D2X, 200mm f/2, 1/1250sec f/2.8 @ ISO100

So when the opportunity arose to shoot a 'Burt's Backyard' profile on Jo for MBUK, I jumped at it. And then started to worry about how I was going to do the place - and Jo's work - justice. Mint afficionados and South Downs regulars will be aware of how well Jo captures the machiavellian character of the place according to the whims of weather and season. But I had just one day to evoke something of the magical quality of the hills, and I could only work with the light I was given. In the end an unpromisingly overcast morning turned into an afternoon with beautifully soft, low sunlight. We headed out on a short loop and got several of the shots that I was after.

Nikon D2X, 12-24mm f/4, 1/30 sec f/4 @ ISO800

But the riding is only half the story. I also needed pictures that give some idea of how Jo works - he's one of the few cartoonists still using paper, ink and paints. The more I thought about how to do that, the more I became convinced that black and white was the way to go. I had an idea that monochrome images of Jo at home would contrast nicely with the soft light of the late summer downs. And I decided to use natural light only - for both the riding and indoor shots. It's rare that I don't use at least a small amount of fill-in flash, but I was determined to make this shoot a bit different.

Nikon D2X, 85mm f/1.4, 1/3200sec f/2 @ ISO 100

I had another reason to use mono - Bibble has a cool plug-in that allows raw files to be processed straight to black and white whilst simulating several film, developer and paper combinations. So I 'developed' my shots of Jo working as though they were Kodak Tri-X, processed for 7 minutes at 75F in T-Max and printed on Agfa Multicontrast Premium. High ISOs and no noise reduction completed the gritty look I was after.

You can see the results for yourself in the Feb 2008 issue of the mag. The ones that appear here are a few that didn't make it into the feature.

Crazy big

Last summer, in one of those 'how did I get myself involved in this?' moments, I found myself trying to photograph a one-day attempt on the 100 mile Transcambrian Way route across Wales. On the wettest day of the year. In my car (which hadn't enjoyed the sheer volume of wetness involved in getting to Wales, resulting in £1200 worth of damage to clutch and flywheel... but that's another story).

Nikon D200, 12-24mm f/4, 1/250 sec f/6.3 @ ISO200

Given the weather and the tricky logistics, I knew it wasn't going to be easy to get the shots I needed. The route crosses large expanses of high, remote Welsh hills with little or no road access, so I would only have perhaps a half dozen spots to get my pictures. Given the time constraints, I also knew that I'd have to get to each spot in advance to work out perhaps one wide and one long shot, squeeze them off quickly and then get back into the car to drive to the next spot.

Nikon D200, 12-24mm f/4, 1/80 sec f/8 @ ISO200

What made my life all the easier was the fact that the rider mad enough to take on the challenge was all-round endurance athlete and (coincidentally) pro photographer John Houlihan. John's an animal on the bike, with incredible handling skills and ride-all-day power that puts the vast majority of riders in the shade. But, crucially for me, he also understood without being told what shots I needed for a magazine feature. So, every now and then, he'd pause for a minute or so to allow me to take a couple of shots of him reading a map, or to re-do a long shot that hadn't quite worked.

Nikon D2X, 200mm f/2, 1/800 sec f/5.6 @ ISO100

Cheating? Well, it put back his record attempt by perhaps an hour or so. But without that extra time, I would never have got enough pictures to fill 9 magazine pages. You can see the results in the January 2008 issue of What Mountain Bike.

Go large

The current issues of What Mountain Bike and Mountain Biking UK contain features from two of my favourite shoots of the year. And, although they've very different, there's a theme that they share in common: big rides in big country.

MBUK's 'Dire Straights' feature follows semi-pro rider and part-time stuntman Rob Jarman as he attempts to take himself and his bike in a straight line from A to B across some particularly unforgiving terrain. In the process he makes full use of all the gear he's brought along in a 'just in case' kind of a way, including climbing ropes and harness and a pair of waterproof bags to use as impromptu buoyancy for fording deep water:

Nikon D200, 200mm f/2, 1/640sec f/2.8 @ ISO100

For What Mountain Bike's 'Everest in a Day' challenge, on the other hand, I had to both shoot and complete one of the biggest rides I've ever attempted. Given that the riding involved nearly 100km and 9317 vertical metres of singletrack in a single day, getting the shots was a challenge in itself that required some creative lateral thinking. But, with help from hosts trailAddiction we covered the distance and got the pictures we needed:

Nikon D200, 10.5mm f/2.8, 1/400sec f/6.3 @ ISO100, two radio slaves

I'm not sure which I'm more pleased about: getting the shots, or being amongst the first riders (as far as I'm aware) to notch up an Everest's worth of off-road descending on a single day.* My forearms have just about recovered by now...

* That statement deserves some qualification. It'd be straightforward enough to shuttle up and down on the same descent, so we deliberately made life harder for ourselves by riding every descent on a different trail.

Time to clear out the garage?

I arrived in Laguna Beach (after a litany of transport-related woes including a 60 mile traffic jam and a missed flight) just in time to hook up with trials, freeride and adventure riding legend Hans Rey for some pictures. Ironically, Hans is getting on a plane this afternoon... to the UK. But I digress...

Aside from the fact that Hans lives a stone's throw from the beach in one direction and the (apparently - I haven't had time to check them out for myself yet) awesome Laguna trails in the other, the first thing that strikes you about his house is the garage. Or rather, what's in it.

Nikon D2X, 10.5mm f/2.8, 1/40 sec f/4 @ ISO400, single radio slave

Hans did a quick tally and counted around 30 frames, around 2/3 of which are still complete bikes. Given that Hans is probably the longest-established pro rider in the world, it's perhaps not surprising that his garage is effectively a snapshot of the mountain bike industry over the past 20 years. It's surprisingly tidy, too, under the circumstances.

Purple anodising? Check. 'V' brakes? Check. Composite wheels? Check. Hans has ridden every bike industry innovation / fad (delete whichever doesn't apply in the circumstances) over the past two decades - and a representative sample of most of those products is still here, safely stored for posterity.

It's not about the camera

Earlier this week I finally put my gear where my mouth is, and used my D40X for a proper paying shoot.

To understand where I'm coming from on this, take a step back for a moment. Pros use expensive, heavy cameras for a reason: they're reliable, they're more likely to keep working in extremes of cold / heat / dust / moisture and they're built to higher standards with better quality components, so they're also faster to use. When you earn your living taking pictures, you want to minimise the chances of not getting the shot by using the best, fastest, most reliable gear available.

Cameras like the D40X are built with none of these needs in mind, because Nikon doesn't intend them to be used professionally. And, for that reason alone, I was just a tiny bit nervous about committing to a job with a camera that's been designed from the ground up for happy snapping. Don't get me wrong - the D40X is a fine camera, and one that I've enjoyed using for family snaps over the summer. But I was putting my reputation on the line here.

On the flip side, it wasn't a completely insane decision either. The D40X uses essentially the same sensor as my trusty D200, so I was confident that image quality shouldn't be a problem. And I'm reasonably careful with my gear, so durability and strength weren't going to be an issue. My main concerns centred around the fiddly, menu-driven controls and overall speed of operation.

I'll take extra cheese with my mountain bike pictures, please
Nikon D40X, 50-150mm f/2.8, 1/250sec f/5.6 @ ISO200

How did I get on? Well, hopefully you'll see the results on a magazine cover in the next few months. So, in terms of image quality at least, the camera delivered - and that wasn't really a surprise.

On the handling and speed front, it was a mixed bag. I occasionally stumbled with the menu system. That's something that should get easier with practice, but the lack of dedicated controls for shutter speed, aperture, white balance and so on is bound to slow things down. I got caught out a couple of times vainly stabbing at the aperture button whilst turning the main control dial and wondering why I couldn't adjust the aperture, only to realise - eventually - that I needed to turn the image preview display off first. Which meant pressing yet another button. An operation that's a turn of a dial on my other cameras turns into a press, press-and-hold, turn a dial operation here: the definition of fiddly.

I also missed having separate R,G,B histograms. They'd be ludicrous overkill on a camera like the D40X, but in this case it meant I had to guess how much to dial down the exposure to avoid blowing the blue channel on a bright sky. I got it wrong a couple of times, and had to pull back the lost detail during raw processing.

On the plus side, the D40X's shutter lag and mirror blackout times are surprisingly snappy for such a cheap camera. It's a tad slower off the mark than the D200 and it took me a few shots to get my timing down, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd been expecting. Remember, I'm shooting a moving target (in this case mostly with a wide lens) and squeezing off a single, carefully-timed shot. I have to get the timing right, and the D40X delivered on nearly every shot. Kudos to Nikon. It's not all good news on the speed front, though, and on the rare occasions when I squeezed off a small sequence of raw shots (it'll only hold a handful in the buffer), things slowed down noticeably while the files were written to the card. Still, at 3fps it's not exactly a fast action-stopping machine anyway.

Will I be repeating the experience? Not unless I have to. Whilst I've demonstrated (to my own satisfaction, at least) that a relatively cheap camera is perfectly capable of turning out pro-quality images, the practical limitations imposed by its build and design mean the D40X is only ever going to be a lightweight backup to my main cameras.

If push came to shove, I reckon I could shoot 90% of my work on it. But that 10% is the reason I spent so much on my other gear.

All-seeing eyes

Magazine editorial work is my bread-and-butter. Although I enjoy it, the opportunity to shoot to a slightly different brief is always welcome. So when I was offered the chance - for the second year running - to work on the new Genesis and Ridgeback catalogues, I jumped at it.

Commercial shoots are different for a number of reasons, but funnily enough the most obvious - (slightly) bigger budgets - doesn't make as much difference as you'd expect. There's still a long list of shots to get, a lot of products to shoot in a variety of locations, and a limited time in which to get the job done. The degree to which the job is scripted in advance varies, but even when it's planned down to the last shot it's important to be flexible and think on your feet. Here's the story behind a small selection of shots from next year's catalogues:

Part of the brief for Genesis this year was to get some slightly more 'radical' images that reflect the changing nature of trail riding. This was an obvious launch pad and I wanted to get a head-on shot, but the background from behind was far more attractive. Focussing on a point in mid-air was tricky; in the end only one of the half dozen or so shots I took was sharp.
Nikon D2X, 200mm f/2, 1/250sec f/2.5 @ ISO200, two radio slaves

I was running out of time at the end of the day to shoot the Genesis road range, but noticed an attractive mackerel sky in the fading light. I knew there was a good fast corner just down the road, so I squatted on the inside of the bend and asked the riders to ride it as fast as they could a few times. To get a low enough angle I had to hold the camera just above the road and pan as best I could with my fisheye lens. The lead bike is only a few inches away in this shot...
Nikon D2X, 10.5mm f/2.8, 1/200 sec f/5.6 @ ISO400

Clued-up manufacturers are realising that tired, side-on views of their bikes in action aren't enough to grab attention. The challenge is to come up with fresh angles and images that tell a story but can also be used in a wide variety of contexts. I liked the play of light on this staircase at London Bridge station and thought we could make a picture that hinted at commuting, so I asked Toby to carry his bike up and down a few times. People kept getting in the way, but that's just the reality of shooting in an environment that's open to the public.
Nikon D200, 50-150mm f/2.8, 1/250sec f/5.6 @ ISO200

This location near London Bridge was ideal for our needs, with a large pedestrianised area and a wide variety of backdrops. Trouble is, it's also privately owned. I suspected that we wouldn't have long before someone asked us to move on, so we worked as quickly and unobtrusively as possible. But sure enough, after an hour or so it must have become obvious what we were up to and we were invited (very politely) to take our bikes and cameras elsewhere. In theory we could have continued with the landowner's permission and payment of a fee. In practice property owners tend to charge a flat rate that's more in line with Hollywood budgets than small bike manufacturers'...
Nikon D200, 12-24mm f/4, 1/320sec f/7.1 @ ISO100

Same old, same old

'Why', I'm sometimes asked, 'is it always the same old riders turning up time after time in the magazines?' The reason's simple. Are simple (there are several):

- riders who are technically gifted and look good in pictures are a surprisingly rare breed. I know of plenty of fantastically fast, fluid and skilled riders who simply don't look as though they're doing anything much in photos. It's just the way it is.

- riders who are prepared to put in the graft needed to make a shoot work ('that was great. Can you do it a couple more times?') are equally hard to find. Some people just like to ride, with no interference. That's fine - but it doesn't make for great pictures.

- riders who are available during the week and fit the above two criteria... well, you've got the idea by now. Much as I love what I do, it's a job and I can't just be shooting at the weekends (apart from anything else, it's restrictive in terms of weather windows. If you're reading this in the UK, you'll know exactly what I mean).

So, what with one thing and another, there's a hard core of maybe a few dozen riders who'll crop up time and time again in the mags. It's not a closed shop - I'm always looking for new and willing models - but it's a close-knit community that works well. Know someone who you think would look great in pictures? Drop me a line!

Quick-and-dirty wallride, and...
Nikon D2X, 10.5mm f/2.8, 1/320sec f/8, single radio slave

... woodland bar spin drop. Chris Smith is an MBUK regular: easy to work with, always looks great on camera and will ride until his legs are about to fall off if that's what it takes to get the shot
Nikon D2X, 12-24mm f/4, 1/60sec f/5.6 @ ISO500, two radio slaves

Incidentally, students on my recent photo course will know by now all about the importance of both timing a shot carefully and tracking the subject accurately. This is a good example of both: bars caught mid-spin (I know from an earlier 8fps sequence that the complete spin takes just 1/4 second) and both bike and rider showing plenty of detail in spite of the slow shutter speed. And yes, this was a single, carefully timed frame:

Synchronised panning 101

The sight of the students on my recent mountain bike photography course working in perfect unison was, at times, strangely comical:

The results, however, were anything but. All these images were taken by the students:

(In case you're wondering where the usual caption info is, much of the EXIF data for these images appears to have disappeared into the ether somewhere along my import to iPhoto / export to external hard drive / open in Photoshop workflow. Er, sorry, and all that...)

UPDATE: more images from the weekend - and discussion about them - here.

I set very high standards over the weekend and everyone stepped up to meet them, improving their technique in leaps and bounds. Special mention should go to Kate, who'd never used a dSLR before this weekend but, after two days, was confidently juggling ISO settings, shutter speeds and histograms. Thanks also to Mike Davis at Bikemagic for the pro elbows, tireless 'just one more time' riding and all-round good humour, and to Mary at Chilcombe Stables b&b for the cake mountains, bottomless teapot and unfeasibly large breakfasts.

In summary: great big helpings of singletrack, a smattering of sun (yes, in England, in October), more cake than we could eat, a hard drive bursting at the digital seams with images, and lots of good company. If you're thinking it sounds like everyone had a good time, you'd be right. And yes, there'll probably be another one in the spring. Watch this space for dates...

This week I've mostly been...

...busy.

Busy hanging out of the back of the car, shooting the 2008 Genesis range:

Nikon D2X, 12-24mm f/4, 1/30 sec f/14 @ ISO400
(NB There's a bug which means this image doesn't size properly if you launch it in a separate window. I'm not sure why this is, but I don't have time to sort it out right now...)

Busy shooting my first black and white images for, oooh, over 20 years:

Nikon D2X, 50mm f/1.8, 1/100 sec f/2.8 @ ISO800

Busy rediscovering why I like riding the South Downs so much:

Nikon D2X, 12-24mm f/4, 1/250sec f/6.3 @ ISO200

Oh, and busy being thrown off private land (twice) while shooting the 2008 Ridgeback range. Oops.

Result? A large backlog of raw files to process, sore shoulders, and a new-found respect for ever-so-polite Polish security guards...

Four eyes

I didn't find my glasses. But I did get lots of pictures like this, which almost (but not quite) makes up for looking like an extra from Mad Max for the next few days.

Nikon D200, 12-24mm f/4, 1/320 sec f/8 @ ISO100

Mountain amnesia

I spent 10 hours in the saddle today scouting locations for a four-day shoot in the French Alps.

Nikon D40X, 50-150mm f/2.8, 1/400 sec f/5.6 @ ISO100

This is one of the places we'll be going back to re-shoot... partly because I managed to leave my glasses somewhere near here.

I've been spending the past few hours stumbling around in the dark in my prescription Adidas shades looking like a fourth-rate Bono impersonator. Someone pointed out a few minutes ago that I could slip out the dark lenses and leave the prescription insert attached to the frame. Which is true. I now feel a bit less like Stevie Wonder... but look even weirder (you'd think it'd be impossible to look weirder than Bono, but trust me, I've managed to do it).

I'm really (really) hoping that my glasses are currently on a grassy ledge enjoying a jaw-dropping starlit view, and that I'll be reunited with them tomorrow morning...

Day in the life: cover shoot

6:40am - wake-up call, courtesy of my 2 1/2 year old daughter. Open curtains to warm, low sun... and a menacing-looking bank of cloud on the horizon. I packed most of the car last night, so after breakfast it's a quick round-up of bodies, lenses, batteries, flashes, tripods and memory cards before heading out.

9:05am - meet Robin, the mag's art ed, on the edge of town. He's brought a bunch of spare kit and helmets, just in case (you never quite know what riders will turn up wearing, and it's surprising how a grotty old helmet or clashing socks can ruin a shot). As we drive towards south Wales the good weather disappears over the eastern horizon, to be replaced by the incoming front and light, persistent rain. Perfect cover shoot conditions.

10:40am - after a quick breakfast top-up stop at (sshhh) Maccy D's, we meet cover star Rowan at the trailhead carpark. Er, except it turns out we're not using this trail. The spot Robin had in mind - which he chose after seeing a photo taken on another shoot, by another photographer - is a few miles down the road. And up a rocky dirt track, on which I try not to bottom out my sump...

11:15am - it's still raining, so we park the cars and head down the trail on foot for 5 minutes to look at our chosen location. The trail is perfect - narrow, natural singletrack running along the top of a tree-lined ridge. Robin's rooty corner looks great, if a tiny bit tame. Rowan's going to have to turn on some extra style to make the shot work, but I'm confident he's up to the task. With no sign of the rain clearing, we decide to get ready and wait it out if necessary.

12:30pm - we're about 20 shots into the shoot, and the weather's playing tricks with us. Although the rain's eased to the point where it's not really a problem, there's a fair bit of mist rolling over our ridge. The thing is, it's both patchy and fast-moving. Several times I give Rowan the all-clear to start riding, but by the time he's rolled the 50 yards to our rooty corner the mist has got there first. The misty pics are atmospheric and moody, but they're unlikely to make the cover. We've got no choice but to keep waiting and watching, and try to time each run so that it's mist-free.

2:15pm - I've got over 50 shots in the can, of which all but a few are technically fine. It's a slow and painstaking process, because I can only get a single shot on each run. More importantly, both Robin and I reckon there's a good choice of keepers. The weather's cleared up now but we've got enough. And anyway, both Rowan and his bike are plastered in mulch and mud and I figure he's probably pretty sick of riding it 'just one more time'...

4:00pm - back home and I take my camera gear inside to dry out whilst the images are downloading. I transfer them to an external drive, backup that drive to a second external drive, and do a quick sift through. We've got plenty of choice and there are several that have worked really well, so I run off some low-res previews and email them to Robin. Processing the remaining raw files will have to wait until tomorrow. I've got to get supper on the go...

Too many cooks?

It's not often that the chance to fill up an entire magazine with your own pictures comes along, but the August issue of What Mountain Bike did just that for me. Well, kinda. The 36 page 'Singletrack Secrets' supplement that accompanies the mag is almost entirely mine, with the exception of about 2 1/2 pages of pics.

Getting enough material to fill that many pages involved three back-to-back days of intense shooting, and I was looking forward to seeing the end result. Photographers are usually the worst people to choose their best pics and often disagree with art editors' informed opinions - 'he used THAT shot?!' - so inevitably there are one or two choices that I'm not happy with. Equally, I can see a couple of areas where I could've done better. But on the whole, I'm happy.

Here's one of my favourite pics from the shoot that didn't make the cut:

Nikon D200, 12-24mm f/4, 1/50 sec f/8 @ ISO200

And this is the shot that made the cover, despite being shot almost wide open on my 200mm... and handheld at 1/15 sec (prefocussed, if I remember right, but with vibration reduction switched on):

Nikon D200, 200mm f/2, 1/15 sec f/2.2 @ ISO100

All in a day's work

I've got a bumper month coming up - the next issues of MBUK and What Mountain Bike will contain, between them, around 50 pages of my photos. That's an unusually high number, so in an idle moment (yep, it's still raining) I thought it'd be fun to work out what, exactly, went into the production of those 50-odd pages (if you're sensitive to the idea of superfluous greenhouse gas emissions, you might want to look away now - although it was an unusual month):

Days shooting: 7
Days post-processing raw files: 3
Raw files processed:541
Days travelling: 4
Miles travelled:1490 (by air: 750; by car: 740)

Much harder to account for is the time spent doing other things that aren't specifically shoot-related. There's a great, big fuzzy area here that includes general office admin, phone calls chasing overdue payments or liaising with riders and magazine editors, answering emails and so on, all of which takes up a disproportionate amount of my time.

What I really enjoy about my job is getting out there and shooting, but in reality most of the real action actually takes place at my desk. Ironic, huh?

Radical air not pictured

Fa fa fa fa fashion (dahlings. Mwaaa!)

My first experience of fashion photography was several years ago, in Tokyo, at the hands of a Grauniad fashion editor who clearly considered an upstart bike photographer incapable of the job at hand. Maybe she had a point.

The muttered expletives emanating from a piece of woodland in a corner of Somerset a few weeks ago were mine, and a direct result of grappling with trying to get relaxed-looking pics of MBUK's Doddy wearing a selection of new riding duds. It's not as easy as it looks, and uncooperative light (it's sunny. Oh wait, it's gone really dark... no, there's the sun again. Repeat ad infinitum) wasn't exactly helping.

But we got there, and here's the (badly scanned) spread from August's mag to prove it.

I quite like it. But I won't be giving up the day job, and I have a new-found respect for photographers who shoot models and clothes for a living.

Photo course 2007: a date for your diary

Update: the course is now fully booked - thanks to everyone who expressed an interest, and sorry I wasn't able to fit you all in.

Because of the number of people who missed out this time around, I'm seriously contemplating running a second course in May 2008. Watch this space...

After a lot of fettling and fussing over details, my 2007 photo course is finally up and running. You'll find full details here, but here's the short version:

- Friday 5th October to Sunday 7th October
- located in Somerset's beautiful Quantock Hills, which boast both amazing riding and great photo opportunities

Ride the Quantocks and go home with a big grin (shot in one of the Quantocks' stunning wooded combes)

- comfortable b&b geared to mountain bikers' needs
- full photo instruction geared to your ability, needs and interests
- trails 2 minutes' ride from the front door
- pub 2 minutes' walk from the front door
- post-ride discussion of pics with slide show
- numbers strictly limited to 6
- £350 per person including b&b, photo instruction and guiding

There's a 10% discount for bookings confirmed before 30th June, so don't hang about.

If you'd like to know more, drop me a line. If my previous photo courses are anything to go by, it'll be a great weekend!

Terms and conditions
Booking only secured with full payment. Cancellations up until 31st August will receive a 50% refund; no refunds will be given for cancellations after this date. Payment covers accommodation and photography tuition from Seb; guiding courtesy of Magicalia.

The wood for the trees

It's easy to get tunnel vision while you're taking pictures. I often get back from a shoot, look at all the lovely close-up action shots (or whatever) I've got, and think to myself, 'why didn't I just step back, change the lens and make the most of the light / location / amazing trail conditions?'

Nikon D2X, 50-150mm f/2.8, 1/250sec f/3.5 @ ISO400, two radio slaves

But I'm getting better. Shooting a test bike for MBUK yesterday, I was struck both by the shape that Doddy was making with the bike and the rare opportunity for an almost overhead shot. So, having got the pics I needed for the mag, I asked Doddy to hold fire for a minute while I scrambled up the opposite bank of the bombhole, zoomed out a bit and put together a looser composition. Twin flashes created a bright pool of light for Doddy to ride through, whilst some dappled sunlight filtering through the trees added atmosphere and some perspective.

It'll probably never find a home in print. But I like it, and for that reason alone I'm glad I shot it. Next time you think you've got the shot(s) you want in the bag, spend a minute double-checking to see if you've missed another angle. You might be surprised...

Space: the final frontier

The simplest-sounding shoots often turn out to be anything but. When I was asked to shoot a single picture of succesful cross-country racer Ben Dale for insurance specialist Hiscox's staff magazine, it seemed like a straightforward job on the face of it: the publisher needed a photo showing Ben and his bike in the countryside to illustrate a single page profile of the rider. What could be easier?

But there were a couple of stipulations in the commission. First, bike and rider would have to occupy no more than around a third of the image, with plenty of (plain) background to run copy over. Second, Hiscox wanted a 'whizzy' image that suggested speed but still showed where Ben was riding.

No particular surprises there, but I could immediately see a couple of difficulties. A whizzy feel is best achieved by panning, but a side-on bike and rider makes a shape that's very hard to fit into a third of a portrait-format shot. And a background plain enough to run copy over hinted strongly at sky, but that would make it hard to show the context of Ben's trails.

Hmmm. Not quite as easy as it sounded, then.

Nikon D2X, 50-150mm f/2.8, 1/400sec f/8 @ ISO100, two radio slaves

Still, I met up with Ben at his Malvern stomping ground and we rode around for a bit, looking at the possibilities. My back-up plan was to concentrate on the required shape and ditch the speed and context bits, so we spent a bit of time making the most of a grumpy-looking sky to shoot some straight portraits. Plenty of sidelighting courtesy of two remote flashguns added to the moody feel, and I shot a number of variations with Ben occupying different parts of the frame. They'd be fine if we couldn't find anything else, but it wasn't really the look I was after.

Nikon D2X, 50-150mm f/2.8, 1/400sec f/4.5 @ ISO100, two radio slaves

My second back-up plan involved a climbing shot. This wouldn't give Hiscox the 'whizzy' feel they were looking for, but it would allow me to show Ben's trails in the background. We found a great section of uphill singletrack with a perfect view of the Worcestershire countryside behind and fired off a few shots here too. The light wasn't bad, but I supplemented it with my standard twin radio slave setup.

Like the portrait shot, I felt the result was usable but not quite there yet - a case of close, but no cigar. Time to move on, then.

Nikon D2X, 50-150mm f/2.8, 1/125sec f/13 @ ISO100, two radio slaves

I really wanted some kind of panning shot, but the bike-and-rider shape conundrum was proving a hard nut to crack... until Ben took me to a bermed corner with an incredible view. It was backlit and the viewpoint I really needed was halfway up an unclimbable tree, but I reckoned I could work with it. To hold detail in the sky and achieve the blurry panning effect I was after called for a slowish shutter speed and small aperture, but that exposure would leave Ben - literally - in the shade. So I paired up two flashguns to punch as much light as I could at Ben and his bike. With a little tweaking during raw conversion, the result holds detail in both the shadows and the brightest highlights in the clouds.

This was much closer to the result I wanted, but there was still something niggling at me. The profile was about Ben, and the shot I was taking didn't really show much of him. Could I make Ben more prominent in the picture?

Nikon D2X, 12-24mm f/4, 1/320sec f/9 @ ISO100, two radio slaves

The only way to achieve that would be to get in close - really close - with a wide lens as Ben rode past. It's a technique I've used many times before, but the timing can be very tricky. I had to stand more or less in Ben's path, take the shot and swivel quickly out of the way in one movement to avoid being clipped by Ben's shoulder. It took several runs before I had a handful of shots I was happy with, but this was what we'd been working for: clear background; a view of Ben's stomping ground; plenty of 'whizz'; Ben prominent in the frame. The mag's designer obviously agreed, because this is the pic gracing the back page.

Even though this was the picture I'd wanted to take when I started, it took a while for it all to come together. Perseverance - and planning - can definitely pay off.