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.

I recently photographed the 2009 Tour of Britain winner, Norwegian cyclist Edvald Boasson Hagen of the Columbia team for an interview featured in the current December 2009 issue of Cycle Sport Magazine. Boasson Hagen and the Columbia team dominated this year’s Tour of Britain with Edvald winning four of the eight stages along with the overall win. At just 22 years old he’s an incredible talent and unusually quiet for a sprinter; the sitting was on location at a team hotel during the Tour of Britain so I only spent a few minutes with him, but he was very quiet, a little awkward and self conscious which I found endearing bearing in mind that he’s just signed a deal with the new Sky cycling team reported to be worth 2.5 million pounds.

And some out-takes that didn’t make the final article:

Portraits I was assigned to produce of the Irish National Champion and AG2R La Mondiale rider Nicolas Roche can be found illustrating an interview in the new November 2009 issue of Cycle Sport Magazine (race photos by Graham Watson). The photographs were shot on location at this year’s Tour of Britain at an overnight hotel which was taken over by most of the race entourage and participating teams. There was a lot of waiting around at the location and very little time with the subjects in an extremely limiting setting – as you would expect when trying to shoot professional cyclists in the middle of a major eight-day stage race – but I love the challenge of working on location and the finished article looks great with a nice choice of images and good layout. A couple of the highlights during the downtime included seeing the eventual overall Tour of Britain winner Edvald Boasson Hagen roll into the hotel car park on his time trial bike after riding back to the hotel (after winning that day’s stage), followed a little later in the evening by the entire police cavalcade. Also worth a mention is the photo below of Agritubel team riders Nicolas Vogondy and Freddy Bichot who walked straight in to the studio I’d set up in a conference room on the ground floor of the hotel, sat down and demanded to have their photo taken; I figured why not, squeezed off a single frame and they jumped up, gave me their email addresses and were off…

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 issue of Shred West South West Bicycle Magazine is now available featuring some of my photographs of Yanto Barker illustrating the cover and four page interview within. As always the photos look better in good old analogue so get yourself a hard copy from your nearest bike shop or get a subscription direct from Shred Publishing where you can also read the latest issue on-line for free.

Astana team rider Alberto Contador has taken his second Tour de France overall victory at the end of the final stage in Paris today. Contador was the favourite going into the race but I never expected him to be as dominant as he ultimately proved to be over the past three weeks, with an overall time of four minutes and eleven seconds faster than the second placed rider Andy Schleck and five minutes and 24 seconds faster than seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong (an incredible performance at the age of 38 and just out of retirement; he’ll be much stronger next year despite being another year older and will be far more likely to contest the win than a lot of people unrealistically expected him to be this year), Contador always looked comfortable and his explosive attacks at Arcalis and Verbier were matched by no other rider. Contador is without a doubt the best climber in the world right now, and his strength as a time trialist – proven by his win in stage 18′s 40.5KM time trial over Olympic and past four-time World Time Trial Champion Fabian Cancellara by three seconds – means that he’s incredibly tough to beat in a three week tour.

It was also a good year for British riders; Bradley Wiggins just missing out on a podium position with fourth place overall – equalling the previous best British overall performance of Robert Millar in 1984 – and Mark Cavendish became the first Brit to win on the Champs Elysees in Paris on the final stage of the Tour – his sixth stage win this year – but just missing out on the Green Jersey to rival sprinter Thor Hushovd.

The course of the 2009 Tour de France was criticised by many and after a great first week of racing provided a long lull in the middle week; the race organiser (ASO) kind of put all their eggs in one basket with one big, decisive stage finishing on the Ventoux on the penultimate stage, with the objective of keeping the racing interesting by bringing it right down to the wire; this made the race feel at times as if everyone was waiting for that one stage with little attacking or excitement in the GC contention. The gamble sadly didn’t pay off for the ASO however as – after much anticipation – the final stage failed to deliver much action as the top riders sought to protect their existing places with only the Schleck brothers trying to attack in an attempt to bring older brother Frank up to a podium position, but were not able to break away from the group containing the other main GC contenders.

Ultimately the third week did deliver some decent action and the 2009 Tour de France will be remembered as a success; but that was despite of the course I think rather instead of it; it’ll be interesting to see what they do next year when the ASO launch the 2010 route later this year.

Image above is an – as yet – unpublished portrait of Alberto Contador from the sitting I had with the 2007 and 2009 Tour de France winner earlier in the year in his home town of Pinto, Spain.

The 2009 Tour De France is finally underway with Fabian Cancellara of the Saxo Bank team pulling on the famous yellow jersey after winning the opening stage’s 15.5KM individual time trial by a huge 18 second lead over the second place finisher Astana’s Alberto Contador, with British rider Bradley Wiggins of Garmin-Slipstream rounding out the top three just one second down on Contador. Head to the Cycling Weekly Stage 1 Report by my lookalike Stephen Farrand for full details. Photograph of Fabian Cancellara featured above was shot on assignment for Procycling Magazine earlier this year for the March 2009 issue cover story and ran double page spread as the article’s jump photo.

A couple more of my portraits of Team Astana rider and past Tour de France winner Alberto Contador made it into the new Summer 2009 issue of Cycle Sport Magazine; one in the Opinion section which comments on rumours of Contador’s departure from the Astana team to join Spanish team Caisse d’Epargne, and the large one featured above as the illustration for his pre-Tour profile in a section of the magazine dedicated to each of this year’s Tour De France favourites. Contador’s Cycle Sport profile describes him as ‘…the logical favourite for the Tour. He won it two years ago, and is now more experienced, although he’s never quite matched the scintillating attacking form and climbing speed he had in 2007.’ Just three days to go now before the 2009 Tour de France kicks off with a hilly 15.5KM time trial in Monaco.

I figure that I should probably make more of the fact that I shot the official photographs for the Olympic and World Champion’s own team earlier in the year so here goes. Nicole Cooke is one of the most successful British athletes of all-time, and the first woman ever to to win both the road cycling Olympic and World gold medals in the same year. I photographed Nicole and the Vision 1 Racing Team at a training camp in Italy earlier in year with very little time available and a lot of images required; we have the group photograph in team racing clothing with bike above, also without bike, in the sponsor’s (Nike) apres ride clothing below (again, with and without bike), and then the individual rider portraits both in race kit and casual clothing for a total of 22 portraits all wrapped up within about a hour to fit with the girls’ busy schedule. The images will be used by the team for the 2009 for PR and commercial use, including the team riders’ fan cards.