Simon Keitch Photography Blog

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.

With the images now delivered and my legs starting to get back to normal it’s time I blogged about my assignment last weekend for Men’s Fitness Magazine and EnduranceLife.com.  I arrived on location at Port Isaac in Cornwall at 9:30PM last Friday to meet the Endurance Life crew at the starting point of the Classic Cliffs 57 mile (91KM) Ultra-Marathon; the milage alone doesn’t do the epic nature of the course along the coastal path of north Cornwall and Devon justice however so click HERE to view the profile/elevation drop and gain. I’d been assigned to cover the race for the event organiser Endurance Life, and Men’s Fitness Magazine who had entered a two man team into the race; twin brothers Nick and Steve Tidball of Vollebak who will be writing about their experiences in the next issue. The race got underway at midnight and the overcast skies made for zero visibility although it was relatively warm at least and the storms seemed to have blown over by that point. Boscastle was my first stop on the route at the second checkpoint at 13 miles into the race; one of the race marshals guided me up the steep path to the top of the cliffs above Boscastle and as I struggled to stay on his heels with 30lbs of camera equipment at 1 o’ clock in the morning I knew I’d be worse for wear come tomorrow. From this vantage point I could see the headlamps of the runners appear from far on the horizon and then slowly make their way towards me; a large group came through at one point and the cluster of bobbing lights gradually moving nearer was strangely beautiful.

The inky black darkness of the night doesn’t make for great photos however so I was glad when the sun finally started to come up and give me a little light to work with. The cliffs above Widemouth Sand provided some amazing views of the cliffs and surrounding hills although by this point in the race the competitors were already starting to get very strung out which meant a lot of waiting, and unknown to myself at that point one of the two-man Men’s Fitness Team had dropped out at sunrise with a foot injury. Fortunately one of the marshals eventually caught up with me and relayed the information, and so I packed up and moved on. I later caught up with Nick, the remaining Men’s Fitness team member at the Devon and Cornwall border and shadowed him through the next two valleys.

Hartland Point; the 50 mile checkpoint was my last stop along the course; the coastal path starting to flatten out a little by this point (relatively at least) although many of the competitors had dropped out by this stage due to either injury or fatigue. I hiked up to the top of the cliffs and sat in the long dry grass looking back towards the bay and waited for the runners to come through on their way to the checkpoint below. It was 14 hours into the race at this point and being a sunny Saturday in July there were plenty of tourists around, looking over at me curiously and a few stopped to chat; amazed that yes, they’re running 57 miles, no not cycling, on the coastal path rather than the road, and all in one day.

Final stop was Clovelly; a beautiful but odd Devon fishing village built into the (very) steep hillside; access to which can only be gained via a large gift shop and laying down nearly six pounds per person; essentially the Disneyfication of the archetypal fishing village. No motor vehicles are permitted within the village and any haulage required is done by donkeys that pull sleds up the steep cobbled alleyways; although for tourists who feel unable to walk the half-mile from the car park down to the sea there is a Land Rover bus service available which presumably circumnavigates the village itself. While shooting runners as they arrived at the finish I set up some lights and photographed Nick from the Men’s Fitness team as soon as he arrived; he looked (disappointingly) good for having just run 57 miles and been up for 40 hours and counting by his brother’s estimation. I shot a few more frames of Nick and Steve and some of the other competitors before deciding I had everything I needed, packed up and hiked back up to the car for the coast-to-coast drive back home; I arrived back almost exactly 24 sleepless hours after I left, exhausted but happy with my take.

Above: Nick Tidball – Men’s Fitness Team – 57 Mile Portrait

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.

This week I was assigned to photograph another Olympic and World Champion – British cyclist Nicole Cooke – at her Vision 1 racing team’s training camp in Italy. I was out there primarily to create portraits of Nicole for an upcoming article in Cycle Sport magazine, as well as to capture some straight photojournalism shots of the training camp for sister publication Cycling Weekly; apparently I’m the first photographer to shoot Nicole in her World Champion jersey which was something of a surprise. I was working with the Italian based writer Stephen Farrand who was in between covering the final stage of the Tirreno-Adriatico and heading up to Milan for the Lance Armstrong press conference prior to the Milan-San-Remo so I’ll forgive him for being late every time he was due to pick me up! And besides which he was a true gent; his local knowledge ensured that I ate at some really nice little restaurants and cafes and he even helped me out by stopping off at a great place to pick up some local wine to take home as we were heading out of town to drop me at Pisa airport. He does kind of look like a much taller version of me though so God knows what we looked like together. I think that next week’s Cycling Weekly will be running the news images in an article, but I’ll keep the portraits firmly under wraps until the Cycle Sport interview goes to press. Also at the Tuscan training camp was a crew from Channel 4′s Transworld Sport who filmed part of the photo shoot, so I may have a cameo on the show within the next couple of weeks…

Last Sunday saw the revival of the Alltrax Newnham Stinger; an off-road duathlon with a run-bike-run format. Competitors set-off at mid-day with a 5KM run followed by a 20KM mountain bike course, and then a final 3KM run. The final run was the real interest of the event for me; it was hard enough hiking up the trail with the camera gear which sent the athletes through rivers and bogs (I personally witnessed one runner lose a shoe, and heard tales of a couple of face-plants later…), over gates and under fallen trees. I loved the format and it would be great to see a longer off-road running only event in this style which has more in common with mountain biking than XC running. Husband and wife Certini team-mates Maddie and Jay Horton (Maddie featured above) won the solo mens’ and womens’ categories, with Amy Tapping and Paul Sole taking the Mixed Pairs win, Carla Haines and Heather Booth for the Female Pairs, and Duncan Baldie and Paul McClymont for the Male Pairs category.

Loads of stuff happening right now, way too much to mention here (as always) but the big news this week was an assignment with Procycling magazine which involved me flying out to the Saxo Bank team’s early season training camp in Mallorca to shoot portraits for a couple of articles, including the cover story for an upcoming issue. I’ll stay tight-lipped about the subjects for now but will post the full details here when the magazine goes to print in a few week’s time.

I met up with Paul from the Plymouth Tri Club last Sunday for a series of images that I’m currently working on featuring local triathletes; location portraits which hopefully capture the personality and dynamics of both the individual athletes and the sport itself. We got to the location about an hour and a half before sunset to capture the last light of the day, and it’s the dead of Winter with a howling gale blowing in straight off the sea; Paul was a legend, going back into the sea on command several times and never once complaining while my assistant clung on to the lightstand for dear life as the wind continued to batter us. We got the shots wrapped up as soon as possible and we were really lucky with the sun which was just starting to poke through the clouds as we finished setting up; I was a little concerned as it was looking like the backlight might become too hard and bright ruining the soft overcast light that I wanted, but then it turned into this beautiful hazy golden yellow that you can see in the images, which lasted just as long as the shoot and had disappeared entirely by the time we packed up.