I’ve been a little slow in updating the blog but now it’s finally been moved ‘in-house’ to a WordPress powered blog here at www.simonkeitch.com/blog I’ll try and get back into updating this thing on a more regular basis. I was at the Totnes Town Centre Bike Race about a week or so ago to photograph the event for the new issue of Shred Westcountry Magazine which goes to print this week. The streets of Totnes provided a perfect venue for criterium racing with a short, tight circuit and narrow streets amplifying the speed and spectacle of the racing and drawing a lot of spectators out to watch the event. It’s not easy to capture the speed and frantic energy of a race like this but there is the advantage of having much better accessibility at these smaller local races – which can be a problem at the bigger events even with media accreditation – which I took full advantage of and hunkered down on the inside of a tight corner with my back against the wall of a pub, safe enough for both me and the riders but with the lead group leaning right into the curve only inches away from the end of my lens hood. That close proximity combined with a wide lens gives the viewer a very different perspective from the staid long lens approach which I’ve been trying to get away from recently as it’s starting to look a little sterile to my eyes. Featured above is the race winner Blake Pond riding for Southfork Racing, and photographed below is Graeme Lackford of the Pendragon-Kalas Racing Team.
