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.

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.

Portraits of competitors at the finish-line of the 2010 Bontrager 24/12 mountain bike endurance race held this past weekend at the Newnham Park Estate in Devon. The 24 Hour Solo Male category winner completed 26 laps of the technical 14KM course (or 364KM in total…) in 24:00:17 with the second placed rider equal on laps but 26 minutes 10 seconds behind.

The full gallery of this series is now available to view at:

http://www.simonkeitch.com/#/Portfolios/24%20Hour%20Racers/1

If you happen to find yourself on board a BMI Baby flight anytime soon you’ll see a feature in their Yeah Baby in-flight magazine’s current Summer issue that I shot for them on location at Watergate Bay near Newquay on the north coast of Cornwall a few weeks ago. The shoot happened to coincide with a short break already long planned at the Headland Hotel (location for the 1990 film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches) in Newquay on that weekend so when I got the email from the magazine’s Picture Editor I jumped at the chance to mix a little business with pleasure.

Despite visiting Newquay a few times over the years I’d never previously been to Watergate Bay just down the coast. It’s a pretty unique beach; very wide and completely flat; the sort of beach which which lends itself very well to kite buggying although there were none on the beach while we were there. As with most outdoor shoots the weather was a worry and we anticipated a disaster first thing as we woke to black skies and intermittent rain and of course the client wants blue skies. This time we got lucky though and the sky soon brightened with some beautiful diffused light coming through the early haze and the sky got bluer as the day went on. The assignment was to include portrait and documentary photography of the people either work or leisure on and around the beach including the team of RNLI life guards, Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant which overlooks the bay, and the surfers competing in the 2010 English National Surfing Championship. Big thanks to Yeah Baby’s Picture Editor Julia Holmes for assigning me, to Art Director Julia Murray for doing such a great job with the layout and image selection, and finally to Editor Ginny Cummins for being such good company on location and making the whole shoot seem easy.

Out-takes:

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.

A couple of portraits of Bleeding Through keyboard player Marta Peterson produced in a matter of minutes prior to the recent show supporting Machine Head at the Pavilions in Plymouth recently. I was at the show to photograph the live performances as well as some backstage portraits to illustrate interviews with relevant band members for Rocklouder. I have a ton of material from the show so I’ll post up some more images over the next week or so.

I first met documentary film maker Mark Kidel last Summer when he was in Plymouth to film one of my photo shoots with performance artist Francesca Steele – Mark is producing a documentary about Francesca’s bodybuilding performance piece ‘Routine’ – and we’ve met up a few times since with me turning the camera on him more recently. Mark has forged an amazing career producing and directing films on a broad range of subjects including artists as diverse as Ravi Shankar, Mario Lanza, and Tricky, was a founding producer of the groundbreaking BBC arts documentary series ARENA and even collaborated with Peter Gabriel on the concept for a world music festival that eventually grew to become the world famous WOMAD festivals. For more information about Mark Kidel’s work head over to http://www.calliopemedia.co.uk/

Promotional portrait of Devon based singer/songwriter and musician Katie Marie; we shot this in a ruined railway cottage on the edge of what’s now the Plym Valley cycle route on the edge of Dartmoor. Another in a series of recent very wintry outdoor portraits and there was still a little -albeit slushy – snow on the ground at the time. As well as writing and performing on her own albums Katie has just launched her own record label; for more information check out her website HERE