I was shocked to hear the news coming through from Spain yesterday of the death of Movistar team cyclist Xavier Tondo as a result of a ‘domestic incident’. The information was (and still is) sparse and confusing, with conflicting reports as to the circumstances and even the other cyclist with him at the time. It seems now that Tondo was leaving his apartment in Girona to head out on a training ride when he was somehow crushed between his own car and garage door; the car apparently rolled forwards, killing him instantly. Some reports indicate that the rider’s training partner Beñat Intxausti was in the vehicle at the time. Strange, confusing and utterly tragic circumstances. Sadly due to time constraints I never had a proper sitting with Xavier when I was asked to photograph him for a feature in Cycle Sport late last year, and had to make do with a few stolen moments at the Vuelta a Espana stage starts, but it was clear that he had a great rapport with the crowds of Spanish fans, a huge passion for the sport and very much the right attitude towards doping (and dopers) in cycling. At 32 his career finally seemed to be hitting its stride and with a sixth place in last year’s Vuelta (his first grand tour finish) who knows what he might have accomplished over the next two years with the support of the Movistar team.
An abridged version of the Cycle Sport interview with Xavier Tondo that these photos were commissioned for can be read HERE
Nice obituary written by Cervelo co-founder Gerard Vroomen HERE
Good piece on Tondo written recently by Garmin-Cervelo team boss Jonathan Vaughters HERE
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…
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.
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.
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 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).
As promised in the previous post; here’s a quick slideshow featuring some of my favourite images from the Alberto Contador cover shoot that I shot recently for Cycle Sport Magazine that didn’t make it to print.
The new June 2009 issue of Cycle Sport Magazine is now available from all good news agents featuring the portraits that I created for this cover story of Astana team rider and Lance Armstrong team-mate Alberto Contador; winner of the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, and Vuelta a Espana grand tours over a timespan of less than 18 months. The portraits illustrating the interview were all created on-location in a hotel on the outskirts of Contador’s home-town of Pinto; a small Spanish town about a half-hour or so drive from Madrid. With just 15 minutes agreed to by Contador for the photo-shoot the pressure was on but I managed to squeeze several different looks and a lot of options out of the extremely tight timeframe and limited location. While scouting the location at the hotel in Pinto I picked up an email from the magazine’s picture desk notifying me that as they were right up against the deadline, they would need the images on their FTP server by the start of business the following day… and the interview had already been bumped to 7:30PM meaning I was in for a late night. Fortunately I’d already checked into the hotel at the location as the writer I was with was to continue south to Granada immediately after we wrapped-up – leaving me to make my own way back to the airport for my early morning flight back to Gatwick – so I stripped down the equipment, grabbed some dinner and hunkered down in the hotel room to make the selects, post-production adjustments and retouching and transmit the finished images via the hotel wi-fi. I got a few hours sleep while the images were uploading, then checked-out at 6:00AM; my taxi already waiting for me in the dark outside the hotel entrance for the transfer to Madrid airport. The finished article and cover look great but as ever there were a lot of good photos that didn’t make it in so I’ll update the blog with a slideshow featuring my favourites out of the images that didn’t make it to print as soon as I can.
Procycling Magazine issue 123 is now on sale in the UK (mid-March in the USA) with my work on the cover and throughout two articles inside the magazine; the Fabian Cancellara cover story and an interview with Jakob Fuglsang in the ‘Fab Four’ feature where Procycling unveil their choice of four young riders who they will follow over the upcoming season. The two articles were both shot back in January at the team’s first training camp of the year, on the island of Mallorca. Time was pretty tight as we were out there for just the last couple of days of the camp and with the riders out on the road all day we were able to get just a few minutes in the mornings as they left the hotel and picked up their bikes from the Saxo Bank team truck parked outside, and then maybe an hour in the evening between the post-ride massage and dinner to get both the interview and shoot the photographs.
With the daylight gone entirely by the time we got our slot with each rider, an outdoor portrait was completely out of the question and a walk around the hotel interior prior to the shoot had failed to unveil anything that would provide a background that would look strong enough for the cover or the jump photo for the article. What I did find however was a very large and empty conference room in the hotel basement which the hotel manager was kind enough to let us use for the duration of the interview and photo shoot which turned out to be perfect; it was warm (which turned out to be important as Fabian was feeling a little ill) and very private. I set up a small studio in the conference room around two chairs for the subject and journalist and shot some candid portraits during the interview, and Cancellara then changed into the new Saxo Bank team jersey for the more formal portraits that you can see from the cover and double-truck image above.
Above: New Saxo Bank team rider Jakob Fuglsang outside the team truck prior to setting out on the day’s team training ride.
