Simon Keitch Photography Blog

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

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:

My latest portfolio edit; filmed using the Canon G9 point and shoot. The auto-exposure on the G9′s video mode is a little annoying but it’s pretty good for such a small camera.

The new July 2009 issue of Cycle Sport Magazine is now on sale in the UK and USA and I’m pleased to say is packed with portraits that I shot on assignment for the publication. Three interviews in the magazine are illustrated with my photographs; Olympic Gold medallist and World Champion Nicole Cooke in Italy (above and below), Tour de France Green Jersey winner Robbie McEwen at home in Belgium, and American sprinter Tyler Farrar in his adopted home town of Gent, Belgium. To read the interviews and see more of my images pick up a copy of the magazine at any WH Smiths in the UK or any other good newsagents in the UK or US (archive race photography by Graham Watson).

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…

While at Newnham Park in Plymouth photographing round one of the Soggy Bottom Winter Mountain Bike Series last week I was also there to shoot portraits of the Shred cycling race team for their 2009 launch in the New Year. Trying to get these guys together in one place for a formal portrait shoot was always going to be akin to herding cats so it was decided to set something up on the race site and grab each rider before the event start. The weather was kind of miserable but the Newnham estate has these big open sided shelters for the clay pigeon shooting that the grounds are mainly used for, so we set up a field studio under one to keep both the gear and subjects out of the rain. I also shot some photo-documentary style images of the team which I’ll be doing some more of over the course of the coming season; below is team captain Steve Toze post race, removing a very sticky energy gel wrapper from his jersey pocket…                                                                                                                                                            

Yesterday afternoon I headed over to the Plymouth Pavilions where the Raiders basketball team were playing their first home game of the season, to shoot some individual portraits of the players as well as the game itself (Plymouth Raiders guard Allistair Gall featured above). The light was pretty bad in the arena and flash photography was completely banned during play which made it pretty tough to get the shutter speed up high enough to freeze the action (ISO 3200/f2.8 to get 1/500th!) but I came out with some good images and expect to get even better shots when the Raiders play their next home game against the Newcastle Eagles, now knowing exactly what to expect from the light etc (this was my first time photographing indoor sports, normally specialising in outdoor sports photography; I enjoy a new challenge and it was kind of refreshing not to have to worry about mud/dust/rain/sun…).