Simon Keitch Photography Blog

A couple of recent portraits of artist (and former musician with Add N to (X)) Steven Claydon produced on location at Royal William Yard as part of a commission to document the British Art Show 7.

Portrait of Devon based ballet/contemporary dancer Victoria Sahakian Rogers, photographed on location at the Dartmoor National Park. Hair and make up by Josie Lock, hair re-styled courtesy of a 30 miles an hour south-westerly wind.

I’m very happy to say that I’ve been working with the Astana Professional Cycling Team this winter to produce the commercial photography for all of the team’s promotional and marketing material for the 2011 racing season (photographed above is new signing for 2011 Czech rider Roman Kreuziger); an assignment that eventually took me to three different countries and involved the full set of planes, trains and automobiles. And helicopters.

First up was a short trip to the Italian town of Montecatini Terme in Tuscany where the team was holding its first training camp with the 2011 season roster, to produce headshots of each of the 27 team riders plus a full team photo in the new team kit, ready for release on the 1st of January when the new team and kit could be officially announced in accordance to UCI rules. I flew out to Italy at the end of November and snow was just starting to fall at Gatwick Airport when I arrived there for my flight in the very early morning and I was subsequently told that delays and/or cancellations were possible… A nervous few hours followed while my flight was delayed further and further as a result of the poor weather before eventually boarding, and we then had another 30 minutes or so on the plane while the ground-crew hosed down the entire plane with de-icer before ultimately getting airborne. Terrible weather seemed to be battering the whole of Europe and heavy rain storms in Italy put paid to the original plan of photographing the full team outdoors, but fortunately the conference room we used as a studio for the individual headshots was large enough for all 27 riders so we had a plan B to fall back on; not ideal certainly but with only this one short window when all 27 riders would be in one place and available for the group shot it’s a case of doing the best job possible in the circumstances (and pro cyclists with 5% body fat aren’t too keen on standing outside in the cold either…). In retrospect I was lucky to get to Italy as I later learned that Gatwick was closed just a few hours after my flight took off and the airport remained closed for the rest of the week. I was woken up at 5:00AM the morning after the photo-shoot with a text informing me that my flight was cancelled, but with pre-production meetings and another shoot to get to back in the UK I didn’t have the luxury of staying in Italy for a few more days so I opened up the laptop and got to work searching for a different route home, eventually finding an available seat on a later flight with a different airline flying into Heathrow, which curiously remained open despite only being on the other side of London from Gatwick.

View from room 817, Hotel Diamante Beach, Calpe, Spain

After the coldest December on record, a week on the south coast of Spain sounded pretty good even if the busy work schedule did mean I wouldn’t have time to get my feet wet in any of those pools in the photo above. I was based in a hotel with the Astana team in Calpe for their first training camp of the calendar year with both documentary images of the training and behind the scenes goings on as well as more ‘studio’ style portraits on white seamless on the shot-list, this time with the new Specialized 2011 team bikes which were being delivered during the training camp. Riding on the back of a motorbike piloted by an ex Moto-GP pro through the Spanish countryside was a definite highlight of the trip and it’s a testament to my driver’s skill that no matter how fast he drove into a corner I always felt safe. Riding in the back of one of the team cars with the Directeur Sportif at the wheel was an entirely different matter however, and I’m fairly sure that years have been taken off my life as a result of one particularly hairy mountain road descent although happily no-where near as many years as I feared might be removed at the time.

The third and final location was Monaco for the 2011 Astana Team launch as well as full length portraits of the remaining seven riders who weren’t at the training camp in Calpe because they were racing at the Tour Down Under in Australia. Arrived at Nice airport and then transferred the 20KM to Monaco via helicopter (naturally), about 30 minutes for a quick stroll to take in the ‘sights’ then straight to work, eat, sleep, eat some more then taxi-to-helicopter-to-plane; in and out in under 24 hours…

My first experiment with video; I bought a Nikon D90 a while ago for shooting video and as a (relatively) compact back-up body and this is my first attempt. The few things I’ve learnt while making this video so far include; editing video is really (really) tedious, syncing the vocal track is a complete pain, and I really don’t like being on that side of the camera. Clearly I have a lot to learn but I really like the cinematographic quality that you can get with the new HD-SLR bodies and although I don’t plan to make anything too involved I am thinking about the potential to produce some short vignettes if and when time allows.

These advertisements for the 2009 Fall/Winter range of jackets from Canadian mountain bike components and clothing company RaceFace are now running in UK magazines featuring photos that I shot a few weeks ago for the UK RaceFace distributor Silverfish.

The launch party for the new 2009 – 2010 Shred Brochure and Price Guide took place last Friday at Carpe Diem in Plymouth and the brochure will now be distributed to nearly 3000 businesses across Plymouth and the surrounding Devon and Cornwall districts. The commercial portraits were shot by myself (all but one) on location at various Shred Ltd Clients’ premises; each one an environmental location portrait of the client featured in the brochure, to be run full page vertical and composed to allow room for the graphics laid over the images featuring a short bio of the business. Featured above is the opening spread featuring Shred Managing Director Steve Toze alongside Designer Jim, and below is John Crouch of the National Marine Aquarium, Myles Hutchins of surf goods (including Dragon Eyeware) distributor Hectic Ltd, and finally Gary Bees of PC Towbar Services. I had a great time working on the photos for the brochure and look forward to producing images for future Shred projects; check out the full brochure at http://www.shredpublishing.co.uk/page2.htm