Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Photogravity 2009

02-lewis elliot, 03-grant aitchison
A few weeks ago I was contacted by phunkt.com, Keith@phunkt wondered if I'd be interested in shooting at the Photogravity event he was organising at Innerleithen last weekend.


The opportunity to shoot decent riders on some of the best courses in the country was an easy call to make. And, I was going to be in Scotland for Easter anyways. (The fact that the sun would be out and it would be warm enough for shorts wasn't even mentioned when I agreed, but it was very much appreciated ;)

So I rolled up at 11-ish and headed up the hill with an equal number of photographers and riders on to a short section of hits on The Matador (just below the fire-road if you know the area).

04-alistar chapel
It's a good spot, with the riders heading straight at me and getting some decent height too. But the sun was properly up and when it was out of the clouds, it was hitting the rider's left shoulder and throwing their face into shadow. So it was time to crack out the Pocket Wizards again and see if my newly soldered plug had fixed the random firing and loose connection problems...

I seems to have cured it. All I have to do now is calm down and think things through as I get used to setting up and using remote, manual flash. I have a tendency to try and get it set up and working as quickly as possible, this normally leads to me thinking that things aren't working and getting flustered! I'm getting better, if only I had photographic memory for the guide number chart that's hidden in the manual...

However, with an equal number of riders and photographers all concentrated in the same area I started thinking about moving to a different spot. One of the only problems with the day was that riders were free to ride the whole area, this meant that there was an element of luck involved in capturing people riding through a decent section at the "right" time. So, back down in the car-park Bryan (my wee brother) and I managed to fill the only extra spaces on the uplift bus.
20090412_20D_9028
This was a good move. Chatting to guys on the bus on the way up led to some polite peer pressure being applied between riders to re-try the road jump across the fire road at the top of the trails.

[the obligatory Road Jump Sequence*(edit: see above for details) image will be added shortly]

This was the first time I've had an excuse to let the mkIII run at full speed. I'm now regretting it as I've got a shed-load of 10-12 frame sequences that now need photoshopping together. To be honest, and with hindsight, dropping back to ~8fps would've been the smart thing to do as it would've given me slightly more space between each frame. And, subsequently, less photoshopping through wheels, spokes and frames etc.

While shooting the road jump I got talking to three french guys who were up for heading down the hill step by step and giving me (and them) time to set-up and discuss lines through each section.
69-antoine laminette
Merci beaucoup pour les deux heures des blagues francais et commentaires mais peut-etre une shirt bleu prochain fois?

Once again the PWs were called in to play as it was very dark in the trees. I also want to nail my ambient/flash balance because, although I'm relatively happy with the shots, I'm not 100% with this yet.

All in all a good day, and an interesting first run for this event, it could be tightened up a little, but not so much as to need race-tape; maybe designate on run for shooting in the morning and one for the afternoon? (and a pre-requisite of NO BLACK tops wouldn't be a bad thing either ;)

04-alistar chapel
Thanks to Keith/phunkt for the invite, thanks to all the riders who were were so accommodating and thanks to all the people who stood in and acted as flash-test-dummies through-out the day.

As usual the full set is on Flickr.
(Talking of Flickr I had the most views in one day ever after putting this set up (1832 views!); Mountain bikers? Vain? nah! ;o)


News article on descent-world about the event ( And I'm in a picture for a change too!)

1 comment:

Boulette said...

thanks to you for having taken the time to shoot with us.

On pensera prochaine fois aux couleurs, promis...