Simon Keitch Photography Blog

As I mentioned in the last post here, I recently photographed the Inov8 sponsored adventure racer Alli Northcott for an interview in the current issue of Shred West magazine; I met Alli while shooting an adventure race for the event organiser Endurance Life and had already briefly discussed the possibility of meeting up for a photo-shoot at some point so it was a happy coincidence when the editor of Shred asked if I could shoot an outdoor environmental portrait of her for an interview in the next issue. The wheat-field location in the image is just a few feet from my front door and is somewhere that I’d had in mind for a while for a portrait, and it was ultimately chosen for this assignment as we live within just a few miles of each other and Alli’s heavy race/work schedule dictated that the location would have to be close to her home (we ended up doing the shoot very early one Saturday morning, not long after sunrise – we got lucky with the weather…).

Issue 2 of Shred West magazine is now on sale and features one of my images from this year’s Bontrager 24/12 endurance mountain bike race on the cover; the shot is of local rider Richie Rowland ten hours into his ride in the 12 hour solo category. More of my work can be seen in the magazine illustrating articles about the recent South West Mountain Bike Championships, as well as the portrait that I shot for an interview with Inov8 adventure race team athlete Alli Northcott; more on that to come.

As mentioned in the previous post, I met up with the Rock Racing team at their overnight hotel in Bristol the night before stage three of the 2008 E.ON Tour of Britain for an interview with Tour de France stage winner and current American National Champion Tyler Hamilton (he actually won the US Champs just a week before coming to the UK for the ToB). The setting was a conference room that the hotel kindly let us use for the shoot which was quickly transformed into an on-location studio; I kept the lighting simple as we had Tyler for just half an hour between his post-race massage and dinner and I needed to get at least three different looks as well as an interview. My assistant interviewed Tyler while I concentrated on the portrait and we wrapped the whole thing up on time with some great words and images for the article; the full interview will appear in the next issue of Shred Magazine and I’m also in discussions with other publications so I’ll post more information in the future as things go to print. Many thanks to Rock Racing PR guy Sean Weide for arranging the shoot/interview with Tyler Hamilton and being such a huge help on location.

I got home last night from covering stage three of this year’s Tour of Britain on assignment for Shred Magazine (Somerset: Chard to Burnham on Sea). The weather turned bad overnight and it rained so hard at the start of the race at Chard that the riders stayed in their team buses until the last minute; everyone signed-on within the last five minutes or so and race leader Allessandro Petacchi left it so late that he had to chase the peloton up the road. I played it safe this time after last year’s mad dash from Porlock Hill back to the race finish at Taunton and with the weather this year making for bad conditions for both driving and photographs, headed straight to the finish at Burnham on Sea to secure my place on the finishing straight. As well as covering the race itself I also met up with Rock Racing at the team’s hotel for a portrait sitting and interview with Tyler Hamilton; more on that to come…