Seb Rogers: mountain bike photography

May photo course 2011: the results

The May 2011 photo course has been and gone. The sun shone (mostly), cakes were eaten, tea and beer drunk (not at the same time, obviously), photos taken and cameras, bikes, business ethics and trail centres discussed. It was a good 'un, and below are some of the pics to prove it. I was kept on my toes this weekend with probably the sharpest group overall that we've had so far, asking some searching technical questions but backing it up with some very creative angles and approaches.

Alex in particular was rarely to be seen, choosing to spend most of his time either lying under a tree or, mostly, climbing into its branches. Must be his Marines training, or something.

If you missed out on this one, the good news is that I'm close to putting together another course later in the year. Watch this space...

Thanks to Mike Davis for providing Pro Elbows (TM) once again, to Mary for the breakfasts and endless supplies of tea and cake, and to Rich, Andy, Alex, Paul, Pete and Olly for being such enthusiastic, creative and involved students.

Privateer 3: Very Severe mountain biking

Earlier in the year I alluded to a shoot in the English Lake District. The thud of Privateer 3 on the doormat this morning (actually, I wasn't at home at the time - but the thud that no. 2 made on my doormat earlier in the year suggests that issue 3's similar weight would probably have woken me up if I'd been around) means that the feature's now in print. And very nice it looks too, with three (count 'em) double trucks and two full page pics, all on their own with plenty of room to breathe.

The short story is this: I persuaded Jenn Hopkins that it'd be fun to attempt a route from an old mountain bike guide book that was graded, climbing-style, VS. So we did. And it was. Very Severe, that is. For the full story I highly recommend that you buy a copy of the mag and read Jenn's view on the whole experience - she's put it far more eloquently than I ever could.

Let's just say it's the hardest route I've attempted with a bike for a very long time. Come to think of it, ever.

In the meantime, and to whet your appetite, here's an exclusive look at a few of the pics that didn't make the cut into the mag:

Nikon D3, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/160sec f/4 @ ISO800

Nikon D3, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/1000sec f/6.3 @ ISO200

Nikon D3, 16mm f/2.8, 1/2000sec f/8 @ ISO200

Another bite at the Apple (TM)

Regular readers might have noticed that I'm fairly keen on photographers retaining copyright in the images they take. It's yours automatically by law and there are good reasons not to give it away. And here's a case in point.

I was contacted by Apple recently about an image of downhill and freeride legend Andrew Shandro of mine that they'd found on my portfolio site. It was taken a few years ago for an editorial shoot. They were looking for some new imagery to use on their site and in-store and decided that this particular shot would fit the bill perfectly. Was it available for use, they wanted to know?

Within a short space of time we'd agreed a price (no, I'm not being paid in iMacs). I even managed to track down Shandro at the Sea Otter and he, always the consummate pro, agreed to sign a retrospective model release so that Apple could use the image. A model release indicates that the subject of a photo consents for that image to be used commercially. It's not necessary for editorial use and, in the UK, isn't always needed for commercial use but it's good practice to have one available. In fact, Apple indicated they wouldn't be able to proceed without one.

Do I need to point out that I would never have been able to make this sale if I'd sold all rights to this image at the time of the original shoot? No? Thought not.

Anyhoo, here's the first use of the pic in question. It may well pop up again in various Apple-related scenarios over the next couple of years.

The guys at Apple, incidentally, were a pleasure to deal with - utterly professional from beginning to end. Like most photographers these days, I've become used to fielding queries that are variations on the 'we really like this picture but don't have a budget' theme. It's nice to be reminded there are still businesses out there that genuinely value photography.

Seeing beyond the obvious

At least part of my job is to record people riding their bikes through the British countryside, usually to accompany a magazine route guide. Simple, eh? After all, it's just what thousands of ordinary riders do every weekend, taking a few snaps of their mates in gorgeous scenery.

Well, yes. And no. Great riding isn't always accompanied by great scenery, for a start. Likewise, views to die for frequently don't have a trail in a convenient place to make a shot. Trail riding is often slowish in reality, though it feels exciting. Which is hard to capture. And so on. So my job is to see beyond the obvious and do more than record a ride by trying to capture a little of the magic that is mountain biking in the UK. That means pulling a range of techniques out of the bag, some of them not particularly obvious.

Here are a few pics I shot recently for a What Mountain Bike Lake District route guide, with some commentary:

Nikon D3, 17-35mm f/2.8, 1/160sec f/7.1 @ ISO1000

Sometimes you've got to work with what you've got. The climb out of Buttermere up to Scarth Gap isn't rideable in large sections, so carrying is the order of the day. Fine. But this day - one of the two we'd allotted for the shoot - dawned grey, damp and intermittently drizzly. Not great conditions, to say the least. Decision one: pack the 17-35 instead of the 14-24. It's not nearly as good, but the front element is a fraction of the size of the wider lens and so is more usable when there's a lot of moisture in the air.

Decision two: make the most of the muted colour palette by processing the day's pics with desaturated colours. In the end, I took this to its logical conclusion with this pic. I'm not a fan of mono conversions to add 'art' to an otherwise dull pic, but I always had a gritty look in mind for this shot (unfortunately I wasn't able to submit it this way to the mag - the route guide format doesn't allow for anything other than straight colour. Shame, in this case).

Nikon D3, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/250sec f/13 @ ISO200

The stone bridge at the bottom of Styhead is beautiful, but it's suprisingly hard to get an effective picture of it. Bikes are obscured by the parapet once they're actually on the bridge, and the flat, direct sun from the obvious viewpoint didn't really do the textures in the rock justice. So I spent some time - probably more than I should - hopping over rocks in an effort to put something better together. And this is what I cam up with. The light's not ideal, with rather more flare than I'd like, but the extra 10 minutes spent on foot yielded a shot that it would have been easy to pass by.

Nikon D3, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/250sec f/10 @ ISO200

Sometimes the time thing works the other way, so you have to be quick to grab what's there before it's gone. This spot is only a few hundred metres from the bridge in the pic above, but I was immediately taken by the dramatic shafts of sunlight and shadow on the fellside. That's what I spotted first... the challenge was to make it into a picture before the clouds changed too much and the effect was gone. 

It's at this point that I usually start shouting at riders (as politely as possible, in the circumstances), waving my arms around and generally getting impatient. To Jenn and Gavin's credit, this is actually a hard bit of trail to ride in this direction, with a tricky run-in and very little in the way of flow. I knew that, but I wanted a shot with riders facing the camera.

We got a handful of pics before the light changed. This was one of the first, and definitely the best in terms of light. Thank goodness for my 14-24mm, which enabled me to squeeze a lot of trail, fell and foreground into the shot from a very tight position.