Seb Rogers: mountain bike photography

Chris Smith Day in the Life: Privateer 6

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

It's all glamour

Sometimes shoots don't go quite according to plan. On the whole I try to avoid hailstorms, particuarly when there's a gale force wind powering those little pellets of ice. But there are occasions when you've just gotta get on with it. And it's at times like this that I have to keep reminding myself... part of the reason I'm paid to do this stuff is having the ability to extract a good result from what looks, on the face of it, iike a disaster. Hint: it helps to have head-to-toe Goretex and the ability to repeat 'it'll be fine' ad infinitum.

I'd add a picture to this post to show you what I'm talking about, except that that would defeat the purpose of the entire shoot. All will be revealed in 2012.

Cover: Cycling Plus Nov 2011

Although I spend most of my riding and shooting time on bikes shod with fat tyres, there's more to life than mud-packs and compression damping settings. Road is massive right now. A perfect storm of resurgent British pro cycling fortunes, subsidised bikes for riding to work, rising fuel prices and a whole bunch of other factors are conspiring to drive (no pun intended) more people out of their cars and onto bikes.

As a result, road bikes are sexy again. And, although there are some differences in the way that road and off-road bikes need to be shot, the basic principles are the same. So, although I sold my own road bike years ago (I was weary of dealing with the stress of too many near-misses caused by poor driving), it's great to be involved again with a sport that's very much alive and kicking.

Nikon D3, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/320sec f/9 @ ISO200, two radio slaves

To prove the point, here's my first Cycling Plus cover in, ooh, over a decade. Smooth Tarmac, blue sky, warm sun... what's not to like? I gave my neck muscles a good workout by lying in the middle of the road for a beetle's eye view of the passing rider. It almost makes me want to go out and buy a road bike again. Now that can't be bad...

It never rains but it pours

Earlier this year - in July, in fact, at the height of what passes for summer on this windswept island of ours - I got the call from the guys at What Mountain Bike to shoot their annual Bike of the Year feature. These shoots are always full-on but big fun, and the results - spread over a big chunk of the mag - make the effort worthwhile.

Over the years various formats have been tried. None of them are particularly easy to shoot, involving as they do at least one van crammed to the roof with bikes, a number of different locations, several riders, variable weather and a brief that'll happily cover several pages. But the past two years - 2009 and 2010 - we attempted the impossible, shooting the whole thing in less than five consecutive days at the tail end of a British winter, in two of the wettest and wildest places the UK has to offer, the Lake District and Snowdonia.

Amazingly, on both occasions, we not only pulled it off but lucked out with no rain and plenty of big, blue skies with sunshine to match.

So this year we thought we'd stack the odds in our favour. Fewer bikes (a mere 10), and a shift to mid-summer to guarantee decent weather.

Hah!

British summers are rarely predictable, beyond being predictably unpredictable. And this July proved to be no exception. Day one of our allotted five days in the Lake District (yep, back there again, but in completely different locations from 2009) dawned grey, cold and variously damp or soaking. Here's art ed Robin on the fellside, complete with improvised headgear:

Nikon D300, 50-150mm f/2.8, 1/400sec f/5.6 @ ISO800

Now it's fair to say that Robin feels the cold a bit more than most, but even so... the weather was pretty shocking. Having seen the forecast for the week I'd come prepared with extra ziplock bags for my flashes and triggers, towels for me and the camera and head-to-toe Goretex. I'd even had to shell out for a new 12-24mm for the D300, my D3 having decided to stop cooperating with any of my older non AF-G lenses (in other words, anything that had an aperture ring) and a packed shooting schedule having conspired to ensure I didn't have time to get it fixed. With only the 14-24mm capable of providing me with a wide enough wide, I couldn't chance waving its huge front element around in mid-summer Lakeland inclemency. Not that the lens would've minded, but the rain drops on the front wouldn't have let me get any pics. 

So I started the week £600 down. And rather damp.

Still, the upside of all the Atlantic front-driven meterological activity was some intermittenly stunning light. I made the most of it.

Nikon D300, 50-150mm f/2.8, 1/500sec f/4.5 @ ISO200

Over the next couple of days I dragged our motley and mostly enthusiastic crew up an unrideable pass or two, in search of action shots of all 10 of the team's top bikes of the year that would stand out. It's fair to say that I've never gone to so much effort to get bike test pics, though you'd probably have to be a trail-spotting anorak to work out how far we went to get the shots. Not pictured in this shot, for example, is the hour-and-a-half push and carry it took to get there (or the exposed drop to the rider's right):

Nikon D300, 12-24mm f/4, 1/100sec f/9 @ ISO400, two radio slaves

The final shot of the shoot was the now traditional group pack shot. As with most relativley complicated pictures, getting to that final 1/320sec takes an awful lot longer than you might think. We needed to be able to arrange all 10 bikes so that they'd all be visible on the page, with room for captions. There needed to be some dramatic scenery in the background, and space for a headline and copy. Oh, and the bikes preferably shouldn't run across the gutter in the middle of the page.

Arranging everything is a matter of starting somewhere (usually at the front) and then building from there. At which point Robin normally has a look, makes a few pertinent suggestions... and we take half of the shot apart and put it back together again in a different order. Just to add to the complication, the flat lighting on our chosen day wasn't making my life any easier. I wanted to side or rim light every bike, but with just two flashes and the bikes spread over a large area that wasn't going to be simple.

In the end, with the camera on a tripod and a trusty helper to move lights around, I shot a dozen or so separate exposures and blended around half a dozen of them in Photoshop to come up with the final result. It's subtle, but every bike is lit.

Nikon D3, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/320sec f/7.1 @ ISO200, multiple radio slaves / blended exposure

And here's a time-lapse of the set being broken down after we had the shot (with apologies for the shonky video edit, which has left a big slug of black at the end. Don't bother waiting... there's no hidden surprise).

What Mountain Bike Top 10 Bikes of the Year from Seb Rogers on Vimeo.

What are we going to do next year? I have no idea. But I'm hoping we can go back to blue skies, sunshine and dusty trails...

Ridgeback 2012 catalogue and website

Earlier this year I spent two packed and fun days in London shooting Ridgeback's new 2012 catalogue and website images. As usual, we had a very large van packed with an assortment of bikes covering the gamut from cyclocross to singlespeed via commuter and flat bar road bike. Master of ceremonies was Toby Howes, who is effectively Mr. Ridgeback and the mastermind and inspiration behind the brand's image as well as the bikes' design.

Toby's knowledge of north and west London streets is right up there with the average cab driver's, although he views it from a cyclist's and designer's perspective. We had a list of possible locations, a timetable based on model availability and a shot list longer than both Toby's arms put together. But we got it done, had a lot of fun in the process and came up with some new images that help bring the catalogue and website to life. 

One of the things I enjoy about the Ridgeback shoot is the sheer variety of techniques and kit I have to use. This year I used just about everything in the bag including the fisheye and Magic Arm, all shot on the D300 to keep things as discreet as possible. The hunt for new locations for 2013 is already on...

See that narrow sliver of sunlight under the canopy? That's serendipity, right there.

You don't need to mash the big ring to make it look fast. You just need a sloooow shutter speed.

The trouble with shooting people who are talking is you invariably grab awkward facial expressions. I had to ask the riders to just look adoringly at each other.

The simplist looking shots are often the hardest to get just right.

Working with children is equal parts pleasure and frustration, but the results make the effort worthwhile.

This is outside what has to be one of the best and most characterful bike shops in London. I would've loved to shoot inside, but there was barely room to swing a chain wrench.

Cover: MBUK August '11

The new MBUK thudded onto my doormat just before the weekend... and it's got one of my pictures on the cover. This is one of my favourite MBUK cover shots for a while, featuring ace rider Mike Smith, a Whyte something-or-other... and a whole load of bracken. It's very British and very summery, right down to the puff of dust being kicked up by Mike's rear wheel.

Nikon D3, 24-70mm f/2.8, 1/250sec f/6.3 @ ISO200, two radio slaves

It was also a lot of fun to shoot. I've probably mentioned before that UK magazine covers tend to be rather formulaic. On the face of it, that should make things easier, right? There's a check list of things that all need to be right, so you can be sure as you're working that you've got a shot that'll fit.

Well yes... and no. In practice a prescriptive cover style can end up being a bit like a visual straitjacket. Recently, though, a complete contents page-up redesign on MBUK has liberated the cover a little, giving the mag's art ed - and me - a bit of creative leeway on this one. Summery green was the theme, so off we went looking for plenty of bracken fonds. This was the last shot of the day and I wasn't entirely sure I could pull it off, because I couldn't see Mike as he approached the corner at a rate of knots. I had to pre-position my camera where I thought he would emerge, listen carefully, then match his speed and squeeze off a single shot as he turned in.

The out of focus bracken in the foreground adds depth to what could otherwise have been a fairly flat image... and although there's no blue sky (or even any sky at all) in shot you can just tell it's summer.

I'm often my own worst critic, but I like this shot a lot and it'll be finding its way into the tearsheet section of my portfolio. That's always a good feeling...

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

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.

Cover: What Mountain Bike May '11

One of my least favourite times of year is February. There are any number of reasons for my dislike of this particular month, including (in no particular order):

- the fact that I have to face up to my Christmas-fuelled credit card bill,

- continuing rubbish weather and short days,

- a lingering sense of guilt that, although salads are out of season, I really can't stand any more cauliflower.

It's also one of the most challenging times of year from a professional point of view. Editors are under pressure from publishers to sell great big piles of magazines in the spring. So there's all kinds of caffeine-fueled talk of blue skies, short sleeves, nice scenery and inspirational trails. Which is nice. But the reality (and if you're reading this in the UK and ride a mountain bike throughout the year, you'll understand exactly where I'm coming from) is that the skies are often overcast, sensible riders are well covered up against the elements, the scenery is a uniform dull greeny brown and the trails are usually hidden under a couple of inches of slime.

We could, of course, head somewhere warmer, sunnier and altogether more pleasant-looking in February. Except there isn't the budget for that... and UK mag readers tend to dislike the idea that journos are jetting off in the winter to ride dry, sunny trails for a few quick photos before heading down to the bar for a cold beer. 

Still, once in a while fortune smiles on the photographer tasked with shooting the 'no pressure but it has to look warm and sunny and lovely' May cover. As it did this year, despite the fact that I decided to head to Wales. Which, as any resident of this island knows, is not renowned for its clement weather - and particularly not in February.

Not only did the sun shine, but it was genuinely warm. The foliage even conspired to look green rather than drab, and the air had the kind of crispness that I associate with desert climates in the spring. I got an email from the art ed after I'd sent through some low res samples asking what magic I'd performed in Photoshop. To which the answer was... absolutely nothing. This is a rare UK magazine cover with natural sky, just as it was recorded by the camera. I kid you not.

What the picture doesn't show is just what a tight spot I was in. I got cramp in my right leg from wedging myself into the bank of soil and rock next to the trail, and I was very glad of the horizon-stretching qualities of my trusty 14-24mm.

Beyond the comfort zone... and the right hand edge of the histogram

What Mountain Bike asked me recently to shoot a series of pics for a new 'Mystery Shopper' feature (which involves the mag sending a willing volunteer out and about to buy various bike-related bits of kit across the UK... and report back on how the stores they visited fared). Now, clearly this wasn't going to be practical as a fly-on-the-wall affair (it would rather have spoiled the element of surprise, after all. 'Who, the guy with the camera, the softbox and the lightstand? Nah, he's not with me...'). So I'd have to stage it. And that causes its own problems.

To add to my difficulties, the brief called (not unreasonably) for the feature opening shot to concentrate on the main product area in question with the mystery shopper element 'conveyed tonally'. 

Uhuh.

Now, I know what the commissioning editor meant. Essentially, it's this: the pics had to clearly show the product that was being mystery shopped that month and the human interaction element of shopper and salesperson, but in as clear and uncluttered a way as possible and with the focus on the product, not the people. Oh, and as usual for an opening shot, there'd need to be room to drop in header, standfirst and introductory copy somewhere.

Nikon D3, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/60sec f/2.8 @ ISO1600

Have you been in a bike store lately? With a few honourable exceptions, 'uncluttered' is not an adjective that readily springs to mind to describe their appearance.

So. One or two problems to solve, then. After some thought, I decided on a two-prong approach:

1. selective focus would be key to highlight the product area. But crap bokeh wouldn't help, because conveying the essence of the background was also important. So I broke out my best wide aperture lenses - the 14-24mm f/2.8, 50mm f/1.8 and 85mm f/1.4. I briefly considered the 200mm f/2 in a moment of madness, but realised that most bike stores wouldn't have the square footage to do it justice...

2. throwing the background out of focus wasn't going to be enough. I had to turn whatever was there into a designer-friendly selection of large patches of tone. Light tone, because no-one wants to see a dark and dingy store (even if that's the reality). And that would mean breaking one of my cardinal rules: I would not only allow the histogram to run off the right hand edge, but encourage it. Cue softbox and lots of light... not for the foreground, but for the background.

Nikon D3, 85mm f/1.4, 1/200sec f/2 @ ISO1600

In a nutshell, here's what I did: lens at or near full aperture, focussed on the main subject. Softbox aimed at background and ceiling, gelled to match the in-store light sources. High ISO to make the store's own lighting work for its keep. Expose for the shadows, not the highlights... and watch that histogram fall waaaaaaay off the right hand edge. Can you say 'clipped channels'?

It's not a technique I'm likely to use very often. Normally, I'm all about saving the right hand side of the histogram. After all, it tends to be where the interesting cloud textures live. Still, it's good to have another tool in the box.