It's not just my own new site that I've been busy with over the past few months. I've also shot the images for three other websites.
Pedal Progression is a new mountain bike skills company based in Bristol, offering tuition and guided riding for riders of all abilities:
Gary Lake, the man behind my new-look, soon-to-be-launched portfolio site, is also busy training to ride the Wales Coast to Coast in the summer. I know. He's clearly mad, but what can you do?
Finally, Gary also put together the site for endurance racing team NinerStansErgon:
It's been the norm for my pictures to end up on the web at some point, but it's more often than not a site that accompanies some kind of print product, whether that's a magazine or a catalogue. These shoots were different, because the web was always going to be the delivery medium of choice. It's a new way of working for me, and one that throws up its own challenges and opportunities.
It's quite liberating being freed from the design constraints of an A4-ish paper product. Looser crops are useful, so that web designers can run banner-style images where appropriate or crop into a tighter area of an image. I'm used to doing my own cropping in-camera and don't generally like seeing my images cropped in print, but with the web you can't always use standard 2:3 aspect ratios... and anyway, resolution isn't an issue. Provided you're working with a good designer, freedom to crop is generally a Good Thing.
Towards the end of last year I posted about my portfolio site's impending rebuild. Well, although it's taken a while, we're now on the finishing straight and it should be live very soon. Incidentally, the new site is one of the reasons things have been a bit quiet around here lately...
Here are some screen grabs to give you an idea of what's in store:
What you can't tell from these reduced size grabs is just how good the pics look scaled to full screen on a 24 inch monitor. I'm taking a punt putting such relatively high res pics online, but there's no denying the impact.
But that's not the only cool thing about the new site. It's also designed to play nice with both iPad and iPhone, including supporting the swipe function for navigation. Here's an iPhone screen grab:
Plus the blog will be integrated, all the pics will be captioned and there are direct links to my Twitter feed and Facebook page.
There's also all sorts of other cool stuff going on in the background, including some clever scaling and a bunch of other stuff that I don't understand. It all contributes to what should hopefully be a slick, easy to navigate site that puts the images where they deserve to be: up front. Big thanks to Gary Lake for 7 months of hard graft in what little spare time he has, putting it all together.
Watch this space - not long now!
In case you've not seen it yet, Privateer 6 is in the shops now and features my 'day in the life' story with UK pro freerider Chris Smith. The first time I worked with Chris was around seven or eight years ago - I needed a rider to shoot a 'how to' feature, and Chris was both local and available during the week. I'd been told he was good, but I didn't realise quite how good until he made everything I asked him to do look easy.
It wasn't long before I was working with him again, this time on his own terms. It was quite an eye-opener. Back then Chris was a rising star with a point to prove and he was arguably going bigger, further and higher than just about anyone else in the UK. Over the next few years we collaborated on several projects, working together to put together picture-led pieces tailored to the UK mountain bike mag market. These are typical of the images we've shot together:
Nikon D3, 16mm f/2.8, 1/200sec f/5 @ ISO3200, two radio slaves
Nikon D3, 80-200mm f/2.8, 1/250sec f/2.8 @ ISO1600, two radio slaves
Nikon D3, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/320sec f/8 @ ISO200, two radio slaves
The thing is, despite working with Chris over all those years, I'd never really seen how he operates when there isn't a photographer around. I know he spends a lot of his time riding, building new lines, videoing himself and working towards new mag features... but I'd never actually seen any of it.
So late last year I turned up at Chris's house one morning and spent the day being a fly on the wall. Well, a fly with a D3 and a bag full of fast lenses, anyway. Chris went through a normal day, I poked a camera in his face from time to time... and the resulting story and pictures are splashed across several pages in the new issue of Privateer.
It was refreshing to have no particular story to work towards, with the bonus that Privateer is effectively a blank canvas for features. There's no particular house 'style' to shoot for, leaving me free to take an approach that doesn't normally work. First, I left the flashes at home. Despite the fact that it was a dull day, I knew my fast lenses and the D3 would allow me to deal with anything that I came across - and for once, I wasn't concerned with lighting any set pieces. Second, I shot mono. Or as close as you can get with digital - I shot with mono in mind, then converted the raw files using Bibble's mono processing plug-in.
Actually, I briefly flirted with the idea of a desaturated, 1970s colour neg look, like the pics below. But, after days of indecision, I stuck with the original mono plan. Check out the results for yourself by picking up a copy of the mag at your nearest stockist...
Nikon D3, 200mm f/2, 1/1250sec f/2 @ ISO3200
Nikon D3, 85mm f/1.4, 1/60sec f/5.6 @ ISO400
Nikon D3, 200mm f/2, 1/1600sec f/2 @ ISO1600
Nikon D3, 200mm f/2, 1/800sec f/2 @ ISO3200
One of the projects I was involved with this summer was writing a technique feature for dpreview.com. Unless you've been living in a cave for the past decade or have zero interest in digital photography (I'm guessing that neither of these applies to the vast majority of my blog readers), you'll no doubt be aware that it's by far the biggest photography site - excepting, perhaps, Flickr - on the interweb. Working with such a large and well-known site is quite an honour, so it's good to see that the feature has had a very positive response.
If you've been on one of my photo courses over the years there's unlikely to be anything new here. If, on the other hand, you haven't had the dubious privilege of the photo course experience, I've tried to distil three days of shooting and coaching into around 1000 words. I hope you like it.
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
Nikon D3, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/320sec f/7.1 @ ISO200, two radio slaves
When MBUK called and said they wanted a Lake District cover with some ballsy riding, added rocks and scenery in the background, I knew exactly where to go. It's a spot I've used a couple of times before, with an unusual combination of trail and backdrop in exactly the right places to fit on a UK mag cover. Props to Neil, who transformed this steep roller with a narrow and iffy run-out into a ballsy wheelie drop.
There was a feature attached to the cover too, making for a full shooting day. No complaints from me though - the Lakes is one of my favourite places anywhere in the world. How can you go wrong with scenery like this?
Nikon D3, 80-200mm f/2.8, 1/2000sec f/4 @ ISO200
Nikon D3, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/60sec f/16 @ ISO200
Shooting the action closer in is a bit more challenging in this spot though, because the obvious angles face south. Why is that a problem? Cos it tends to mean strong backlighting. And, at this time of year, the low sun means it's often in the frame too. Cue flare and a lot of lighting issues.
In the days of film I'd probably have stuck a flash on top of the camera, set it to TTL -1 stop, and fired away. The results would've worked in terms of evening out foreground and background lighting levels but, well, it wouldn't have looked great. Now, thanks to the wonders of digital, I can use a combination of remote flash and careful raw file processing to make it look the way I saw it on the day.
Here's the result:
Nikon D3, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/320sec f/9 @ ISO200, two radio slaves
There's no way I could have achieved such a balanced result with film... at least, not in a reasonable time frame. I would've needed a Polaroid back, a bag full of film, a rider with a great deal of patience... and no pressing need to get a whole load more shots done on the same day.
Film is dead. Long live digital...