Danish professional cyclist Lars Bak photographed for the new issue of Cycle Sport Magazine. It’s never ideal photographing an athlete during a big race; I was sent out to a team hotel on the 2011 Tour of Britain route to photograph Bak and I know from past experience that the subject will be tired, have very little time, and will have no clothing other than the standard team issue tracksuit and race kit. After arriving on location, scouting and ultimately setting up a studio in a conference room and waiting all evening I was eventually told by one of the team soigneurs that Lars was too fatigued and had already retired to bed. It’s frustrating to leave with nothing in the can but with a guarantee of an early slot the following evening it didn’t feel that my time was entirely wasted so I returned to the hotel nice and early the next day hopeful that we could get an outdoor set-up in while it was still daylight.
More waiting followed and it transpired that Lars was riding back to the team hotel after the stage for some extra training (that’s a 180KM of racing, then around 60KM or so from the race finish to the team hotel) so it was looking like it was going to be pretty tight. Fortunately when Bak did arrive we talked him into doing the shoot before dinner and we managed to squeeze out the last few minutes of daylight after finding the only clear view from the grounds of the motorway-side hotel (looking out over the motorway in fact, to the hills beyond). I’d taken along a few options on wardrobe as an alternative to the team issue clothing and we went with a formal coat for both style and warmth (professional cyclists are notoriously sensitive to the cold…). We managed to get nearly 25 minutes with Lars Bak in the end; three set-ups, one outdoor, two indoor, and three wardrobe changes plus a little conversation; not so bad. Big thanks to Ed Pickering and the rest of the team at Cycle Sport for the assignment and doing such a nice job with the layout.
In September last year I headed to Spain for a few days on location at the Vuelta a Espana for Cycle Sport Magazine. As well as shooting portraits for a handful of interview features my brief also included shooting a 14 page photo feature - Vuelta Unseen – capturing some of the behind the scenes goings on and other moments not normally seen in the regular television and photo coverage. I’ve finally gotten around to making an edit from the huge number of photographs for a web gallery which you can see above or in glorious full-screen goodness at my portfolio site here: Vuelta Unseen Gallery
A tearsheet from the current issue of Runner’s World featuring a photo I shot for the magazine’s double page ‘Rave Run’ section. The location is on the north Cornwall coastal path near Bude (the GCHQ satellite base can be seen on the horizon on the right hand of the frame). We shot at a few different locations across the section of coastline until finding this spot which was about a half-hour hike from the nearest car park. I’m not normally a big fan of tripods but I had decided to experiment with shooting some panoramas to try and give a sense of the space and terrain. The final full pano featured below is a total of 14 vertical frames (shot with a 24mm lens); obviously the image had to be cropped to fit the full bleed double page spread format but it still provides a unique super-wide angle perspective plus lee-way for positioning within the page.
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:
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.
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.
I was on location in Bournemouth at 6:00AM last Sunday (ouch) for the 2009 running of the Bournemouth International Triathlon; on assignment for Triathlete’s World Magazine. The first wave (Sprint Distance) set off at 6:30AM with the Standard Distance competitors setting off from 7:00AM. The weather conditions were cold and the sea was choppy but apart from a few very light showers it remained dry and the weather improved throughout the morning. First man home in the Sprint Distance was Stephen Barratt (Team Durham Primera) at 1:05:21 and first woman was Holly Lawrence (Swansea Uni) at 1:09:12. Full Distance men’s winner was James Gilfillan (Primera) at 1:54:47, and first woman was Tracy Cook (Tri UK) at 2:13:02. Look out for the photos illustrating the full race report in the October issue.
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’ve been a little slow in updating the blog but now it’s finally been moved ‘in-house’ to a WordPress powered blog here at www.simonkeitch.com/blog I’ll try and get back into updating this thing on a more regular basis. I was at the Totnes Town Centre Bike Race about a week or so ago to photograph the event for the new issue of Shred Westcountry Magazine which goes to print this week. The streets of Totnes provided a perfect venue for criterium racing with a short, tight circuit and narrow streets amplifying the speed and spectacle of the racing and drawing a lot of spectators out to watch the event. It’s not easy to capture the speed and frantic energy of a race like this but there is the advantage of having much better accessibility at these smaller local races – which can be a problem at the bigger events even with media accreditation – which I took full advantage of and hunkered down on the inside of a tight corner with my back against the wall of a pub, safe enough for both me and the riders but with the lead group leaning right into the curve only inches away from the end of my lens hood. That close proximity combined with a wide lens gives the viewer a very different perspective from the staid long lens approach which I’ve been trying to get away from recently as it’s starting to look a little sterile to my eyes. Featured above is the race winner Blake Pond riding for Southfork Racing, and photographed below is Graeme Lackford of the Pendragon-Kalas Racing Team.
