Simon Keitch Photography Blog

One of the previously unpublished portraits I shot of American professional cyclist (currently with Garmin) Tyler Farrar earlier in the year in his adopted home town of Ghent in Belgium has finally seen it into print in the new November 2009 issue of US cycling magazine VeloNews. I’m not too sure where you can pick up a copy in the UK but you can buy a subscription (including a digital subscription) at VeloNews.com

Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara took his third World Championship jersey today when he won the 2009 World Time Trial Championships by an incredible 27 seconds over the Silver medallist Gustav Larsson of Sweden; Cancellara showing once again that when on form he’s unbeatable in the discipline. I thought I’d take this opportunity to pull a few unpublished photographs from my Procycling Magazine cover shoot earlier in the year; a much tighter cropped alternative photo from the above set-up ran double page spread in the original interview but this one and the two out takes below have never been published or publicly shown previously. Fabian was a pleasure to work with and a true gent, he even went back to his hotel room to find a team jersey to wear for the shoot when the team management didn’t deliver one to the location (a not so glamorous but very large conference room in the team hotel’s basement) as arranged.

I made these portraits of Frank Schleck back in January this year while on assignment for Procycling Magazine. The Saxo Bank team were based in a hotel on the Spanish island of Mallorca for a week long team training camp; their first of  the year and their first with the new Saxo Bank sponsor, also their first on the new bikes supplied by Specialized. I was on location with staff writer Ellis Bacon primarily to photograph the Swiss Olympic and former World Time Trial Champion Fabian Cancellara for the cover of the March issue, but as part of my brief was also asked to photograph the other riders and team management (including team owner Bjarne Riis who accompanied the riders on the final day’s training ride) on a more casual basis wherever possible for the magazine to keep on their stock file. I really love the above image – so much so that I have a framed print on the wall above my desk – but as far I’m aware it’s never actually been published. I asked Frank if I could take his portrait as the riders were getting themselves organised outside their hotel and next to the team truck one morning, and he instinctively took off his jacket so I could photograph him in his Luxembourg National Champion’s jersey (Frank lost the title later in the year, but to his younger brother Andy so it’s still in the family); it was first thing in the morning and the sun was still behind the buildings surrounding the town-centre hotel, which provided a really beautiful soft ambient light; as much as I love lighting my portraits (which is a big part of my style) it’s important to recognise those times when adding strobe light will actually detract from the image (Annie Leibovitz wrote in her At Work book that “I’ve never been able to make strobe light look as beautiful as natural light”).

The new website is finally up and running; been working on this for a while and I’m very happy with the way it’s looking. After a lot of consideration I went with a site from A Photo Folio which was founded by Rob Haggart of the A Photo Editor blog; the latter is a great resource and definitely worth bookmarking. The site is exactly what I like; a clean, slick layout and navigation with all the emphasis on the images; no bells or whistles, no gimmicks, just easy and intuitive navigation with some nice features like the ‘email this image to a friend’ option and image info available at a click. The back end is great also which will make updating nice and easy; that’s important as I like to keep my site updated with new images, and I plan to add some behind the scenes footage to the video section as and when.