Oli Beckingsale For Shred Magazine

December 10th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink

Oli Beckingsale Shred Magazine Cover

Issue 51 of Shred magazine is now available featuring my photos of British cross-country mountain bike legend and Giant Global Team rider Oli Beckingsale on the cover and illustrating the feature interview; I shot these images way back in the summer in Oli’s hometown of Bristol and it’s great to finally see them in print. Read on-line or order a good old fashioned hard-copy HERE or pick one up from any good UK bike shop.

Oli Beckingsale Shred 1

Oli Beckingsale Shred 2

Oli Beckingsale Shred 3

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Alberto Contador – Cycle Sport Magazine cover June 2009

April 22nd, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink

The new June 2009 issue of Cycle Sport Magazine is now available from all good news agents featuring the portraits that I created for this cover story of Astana team rider and Lance Armstrong team-mate Alberto Contador; winner of the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, and Vuelta a Espana grand tours over a timespan of less than 18 months. The portraits illustrating the interview were all created on-location in a hotel on the outskirts of Contador’s home-town of Pinto; a small Spanish town about a half-hour or so drive from Madrid. With just 15 minutes agreed to by Contador for the photo-shoot the pressure was on but I managed to squeeze several different looks and a lot of options out of the extremely tight timeframe and limited location. While scouting the location at the hotel in Pinto I picked up an email from the magazine’s picture desk notifying me that as they were right up against the deadline, they would need the images on their FTP server by the start of business the following day… and the interview had already been bumped to 7:30PM meaning I was in for a late night. Fortunately I’d already checked into the hotel at the location as the writer I was with was to continue south to Granada immediately after we wrapped-up – leaving me to make my own way back to the airport for my early morning flight back to Gatwick – so I stripped down the equipment, grabbed some dinner and hunkered down in the hotel room to make the selects, post-production adjustments and retouching and transmit the finished images via the hotel wi-fi. I got a few hours sleep while the images were uploading, then checked-out at 6:00AM; my taxi already waiting for me in the dark outside the hotel entrance for the transfer to Madrid airport. The finished article and cover look great but as ever there were a lot of good photos that didn’t make it in so I’ll update the blog with a slideshow featuring my favourites out of the images that didn’t make it to print as soon as I can.

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Fabian Cancellara – Procycling Cover

March 3rd, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink

Procycling Magazine issue 123 is now on sale in the UK (mid-March in the USA) with my work on the cover and throughout two articles inside the magazine; the Fabian Cancellara cover story and an interview with Jakob Fuglsang in the ‘Fab Four’ feature where Procycling unveil their choice of four young riders who they will follow over the upcoming season. The two articles were both shot back in January at the team’s first training camp of the year, on the island of Mallorca. Time was pretty tight as we were out there for just the last couple of days of the camp and with the riders out on the road all day we were able to get just a few minutes in the mornings as they left the hotel and picked up their bikes from the Saxo Bank team truck parked outside, and then maybe an hour in the evening between the post-ride massage and dinner to get both the interview and shoot the photographs.
With the daylight gone entirely by the time we got our slot with each rider, an outdoor portrait was completely out of the question and a walk around the hotel interior prior to the shoot had failed to unveil anything that would provide a background that would look strong enough for the cover or the jump photo for the article. What I did find however was a very large and empty conference room in the hotel basement which the hotel manager was kind enough to let us use for the duration of the interview and photo shoot which turned out to be perfect; it was warm (which turned out to be important as Fabian was feeling a little ill) and very private. I set up a small studio in the conference room around two chairs for the subject and journalist and shot some candid portraits during the interview, and Cancellara then changed into the new Saxo Bank team jersey for the more formal portraits that you can see from the cover and double-truck image above.
Above: New Saxo Bank team rider Jakob Fuglsang outside the team truck prior to setting out on the day’s team training ride.
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