Simon Keitch Photography Blog

The current issue of Cycle Sport Magazine features portraits of Garmin-Transitions team cyclist and Tyler Farrar lead-out man Julian Dean. The portraits were shot on location in Spain during the Vuelta a Espana, and despite producing a few lit portrait options at the team’s overnight hotel the image that ran as the opener to the interview (above) was shot with available ambient light outside the team bus in about 20 seconds flat. There’s probably a lesson to be learned there.

Julian’s a super-nice guy; quiet and laconic but incredibly polite and earnest and he’s been riding at the top-tier of the sport long enough to have gained a huge amount of experience and some great anecdotes, including being tackled to the ground by a gendarme, getting shot with a BB gun and being on the receiving end of Mark Renshaw‘s infamous head-butts at this year’s Tour de France so the interview (written by Andy McGrath) is well worth reading; the seven page feature also includes a few more of my portraits not seen here so get your hands on a copy to see the full feature.

Out takes:

Back in June I travelled out to Switzerland with Cycle Sport magazine staff writer Andy McGrath to photograph Daniel Teklehaimanot at the UCI World Cycling Centre in Aigle; the feature appears in the new October 2010 issue and I’m pleased to say that they’ve done a very fine job with image selection and layout with only one photo that isn’t mine sneaking in via a side-bar with Sky rider John-Lee Augustyn about the difficulties for Africans making it to the professional ranks. This was a great assignment to get and was quite different from the usual celebrity athlete interview feature (not that I don’t love those too…); currently relatively unknown, Teklehaimanot was born and raised in the African country of Eritrea (a country with a strong cycling scene as a result of it being colonised by Italy from 1890 to 1941 but also a bloody war-torn history and ranked as the worst country in the world for press freedom violations) and poised to become the first black-African cyclist to make it to the top-tier of professional cycling despite undergoing a heart operation just last year after tests indicated that he had tachycardia. Big thanks to Ed Pickering for assigning me and Andy McGrath for being such a good travel companion and doing such a great job with the words; you can read the article in full by picking up a copy of the new issue from any good newsagents.

Out-takes: I really wish I’d stepped back and taken a wider set-up photo of this first one (an alternate from the photo that ran as the double page spread opener); there were four of us all hunkered down in the wheat; as well as Daniel and me, Andy (writer) and Michel (Daniel’s coach) were holding onto a softbox for dear life as gale-force winds blew through the valley.

I photographed HTC-Columbia cycling team member Mark Renshaw for the latest issue of Cycle Sport Magazine; a super-quick speedlight portrait in a very cramped hotel room just prior to the team presentation at the Tour Of Switzerland. I arrived on location at the team’s hotel with Cycle Sport staff writer Andy McGrath nice and early so we’d have plenty of time to scout the location and work out a shot-plan. Unfortunately HTC-Columbia were staying at what must be the only hotel in Switzerland without a chocolate-box view; just a motorway and some pylons… Any options we did have ultimately went out the window though after meeting with the team’s PR, who initially had some trouble tracking down Mark and eventually found him on the massage table in his room. ‘Do we have any time constraints?’ we asked the PR. ‘No, none at all. Oh, but Mark has to be on the team bus by 7:15PM’. A glance at our watches reveals that it’s already nearly 6:20PM… By the time the interview is wrapped up and Renshaw climbs off the massage table I realise that there’s no time to move outside so I grab a Nikon speedlight and a Lastolite Ezybox softbox and move into the small space left by the soigneur as he kindly folds up the massage table and moves it to one side while Mark grabs another top to wear. Ran through a few different expressions/options before Mark apologised for not having more time and legged it out the door for the Tour of Switzerland team presentation. Mark Renshaw can currently be seen leading out Mark Cavendish at the Tour de France and is widely regarded as the best lead-out man in the business; it’s a tough career decision to forego your own success and personal glory however and it’ll be interesting to see if he does eventually step up to winning races for himself.

The new April 2010 issue of Cycle Sport is now on sale and includes an article I shot for the magazine on location in Holland with Rabobank team rider Robert Gesink. There was a big train crash in Brussels a few days before we were due to head out to meet Gesink at his home in Holland not too far from the German border which nixed the original plan to catch the Eurostar out to Belgium and hire a car from there, so plan B was to drive out the whole way to avoid any possible issues with the train service that may of caused us to miss our very narrow window. Three long days of traveling across northern France, Belgium and Holland and back again on a road that I can only describe as consistent was made more bearable with the company of Cycle Sport staff writer Lionel Birnie and we kept ourselves entertained with some good conversation and dreams of a large glass of Leffe at that night’s hotel. The shoot was the usual affair with a limited location and time and we were in and out of Gesink’s home in a little over two hours including the interview but with some solid images and several different options in the can. As always there were many good photos that didn’t make it into the final article but the magazine did a great job with the layout which as always is best appreciated in print so be sure to pick up a copy from any good newsagent. The rest of the layout is below, along with some out takes that didn’t make the final cut.