The 2015 Tour de France rolled around and I headed up to Holland to cover the the opening weekend. Despite having a full credentialed car pass for the race, I made the decision to travel by bike for the first four stages. Carrying everything I needed strapped to my bike in a makeshift fashion, I ventured off for a 700km pedal around the flatlands of Europe.First stop was the Grand Départ, which fell the the Dutch city of Utrecht this time around. Having to cycle 200km in the morning to get to the city itself, I found myself pretty shattered by the time I’d made it to the course. The city was packed with thousands of people lining the streets and getting around by bike proved to be quite the challenge. I was able to get into the warm up area and capture some images of the riders warm up, before checking out some of the city and grabbing some food. The aftermath of the race around the course proved just as interesting as the action itself, with the leftover rubbish showing that the Dutch know how to party.Travelling by bike meant that the evenings rest was short. I spent the night in Utrecht before following the route of stage two out through Rotterdam and onto the coastline of the North Sea with the intention to make it to Antwerp by nightfall. 
Check out images from stage two.
Author: timothy_lloyd
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Tour de France 2015: Utrecht
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Swiss Alpine Passes
Monday the 15th June was a day of two alpine passes for me. I had a commission from the organisers of the World Tour Swiss cycling race, the Tour de Suisse. This tour has a history of competing with the French speaking (but also in Switerland) Tour de Romandie and its route almost always sticks to the Swiss German speaking Cantons. For me, this meant adventuring over to fresh parts of the country that I don’t often get to visit.I was to spend Monday’s stage on the back of a motorbike and had been told that the Gotthard pass, that the race was due to ride up, was truly an iconic piece of road. I’d not heard of the pass until this week, but it was said that if it was in France, it would be one of the most famous cycling roads ever. The ascent, believe it or not, is cobbled. In terms of bike racing, it’s a little like Paris – Roubaix, but on a mountain. With time to spare in the morning, I decided to drive the pass before seeing it from the back of a bike later in the day. It’s really quite special, like nothing i’ve seen before, and of course cobbled as promised.
Having finished my days work, it was time to head back home. A quick google map search showed three possible routes, with me naturally choosing the shortest distance but longest predicted time. “Maybe it’s a mountain pass” I thought to myself. What followed was a 37km stretch of road up to the Passo Della Novena, which at 2478m is the second highest paved road in Switzerland. What makes this pass so special is that following a great day at work, I didn’t see a single car for the whole time. Incredible.
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Athens In May
I usually pass through Athens during peak summer season, with the city being treated as little more than a transit point as I escape the urban heat and head for the coastline. A recent wedding commission meant that i’d be heading over to Greece in the shoulder season of May. Cooler temperatures and quieter streets meant that I was able to fully explore Athens on three separate occasions, getting to know my way around the city a little more each time.Staying with a Athens based artist (who also happens to be my girlfriends cousin), I got to see some of the local sides to the city. I was keen to check out the quasi autonomous anarchist neighbourhood of Exarchia, where heavily politicised graffiti is on display. A lot of the artwork revolves around the economic downfall, with drug use being an expression of some austerity-hit youths and scarily on display in the streets.Here’s a few shots captured around the city.
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Four days on the Tour de Romandie
Switzerland played host to the 2015 Tour de Romandie last week, with freezing temperatures and torrential rain descending on the riders as they made their way through the French speaking part of the country. I covered a few of the stages, including seeing the drama of a team time trial for the first time. Despite the weather, the event was captivating from start to finish. A final stage time trial throughout the steep, wet, cobbled streets of Lausanne was the icing on the cake, with a successful 2015 Tour de Romandie coming to a close. Onwards to the Tour de Suisse for my next cycling assignment.Click here to view the complete Tour de Romandie gallery
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Two Windows Project
This post introduces my Two Windows project, which is available to see on my website now. Link is here, and also at the end of the article.
Today (April 16th, 2015) is a pretty miserable day. Looking out the window i’m greeted by a washed out, largely forgettable skyline (update: it actually just started raining). Living by a lake you get plenty of days like that and they have a habit of just merging into one another. Had I of woken up any time after 7, I’d have thought that the day began like that, but 5 minutes earlier, for just the briefest of moments, the sun, the clouds and the mountains all aligned to make something magic (above image). My girlfriend actually questioned why i’d taken a photo as she’d woken from her slumber just a few minutes too late.I’m not a believer in fate, but I do like the fact that the skyline produced something beautiful for a fleeting moment, exactly a year to the date that I moved into an apartment that kickstarted the Two Windows project. The project spans a year (as of today) of living in an attic of a house in the Swiss town of Nyon. The living space, although relatively large, is only graced by two windows. If I think back at all of the accommodation i’ve lived in, there’s never been somewhere with such a small amount of natural light. This would usually put me right off a property, but these old panes of glass hold something special, and it’s all down to the view.
The layout is pretty simple; one window faces South, and the other looks North. Having a South facing window that overlooks a lake brings about quite a bit of satisfaction, but the North facing window, that watches over our local Château is often where I can lose a lot of my time. Each view offers something quite different, complimenting each other when displayed side by side.
Capturing images over the length of a year is quite the feat of endurance, but thinking about it, Two windows may be one of the least labour intensive projects i’ve ever shot. It’s not everyday that you can make a set of images whilst still being in your pyjamas, eating a bowl of porridge. Simple to capture? Perhaps, but this collection of images gives me a great deal of satisfaction, effectively wrapping up a years worth of memories into one gallery.The Two Windows project is available to see on my website now. -
Cool Stuff: Sigma 24mm 1.4 Art
New Lens – New Instagram Shot
I’m not one to obsess about my photography gear. Of course, I love to geek out every now and again, but in general I just enjoy having the necessary tools to get a specific job done. This weekend though I found myself in a slightly unusual position of having one of the first copies of the newly released Sigma 24mm 1.4 Art lens. The company had just begun to start shipping them and I was lucky enough to find one heading my way before working in the mountains over the weekend.
I generally put my camera equipment through a fair deal of stress, with large percentage of my work taking place in the alpine environment. This particular copy of the Sigma 24mm started its life hanging from my neck for a one hour hike, whilst getting into my position for the Verbier stage of the Freeride World Tour. I’ve been intrigued with the Sigma Art lenses since playing with the 50mm whilst in Germany for the Photokina event. The word on the street during the show was that Sigma have started to produce big, bold prime lenses that have incredible optics. Image quality is certainly the sweetener but the price seems to seal the deal with the lens range coming in substantially cheaper than the Canon or Nikon equivalents.With a 50mm and 35mm already out in the market, I was keen to try the 24mm as soon as I heard that production was underway. Having visited the UK Photoshow the previous week where I spent a little time with the new lens, I was quick to place an order that arrived just in time on Friday. First things first, I love the build quality. At 665g it’s not the heaviest lens but it provides a reassuring weight. Sat on a pro series body it feels well balanced and comfortable to work with.
I was shooting a skiing event that required a lens with a longer reach for the action, but I was quick to change to the Sigma 24mm as often as I could. With a morning hike to the top of the mountain I simply threw the camera around my neck, trying out various settings on the fly. The lens will come into its own as we move out of the Winter season and into Spring, with it ideal for a number of up and coming assignments. Until then, it’s nice to have a new piece of kit, especially one that not many people have got their hands on yet.Here’s a couple of shots from the event.
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One Week, Two Light Shows
This week I had the opportunity to witness two light shows, one constructed by the hands of humans, and the other an incredible natural phenomenon. Lights and Summits was the first chance, where several mountain ranges across the canton of Valais were lit up simultaneously. It was not until I was driving towards the Dents du Midi that I found out that the light show would last for only three minutes. “Are you kidding me?”, my rather blunt response. I pictured an evening of photographing the mountain range from a host of different angles, but in fact I only captured 6 frames during the entire event. It felt a little like the Tour de France, where you often commute all day for the riders to the fly past you in 30 seconds. Three minutes in and, as predicted, the lights went out. Advertising for this event had been sparse and I was actually one of five people (all of whom were in my group) that had turned up to the recommended viewpoint that i’d seen on the organisers website. Literally there was no one else there! One of the most amazing things i’ve seen in the mountains and no one around. Perfect.
The second light show this week was seen by a few more people. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions got to witness a solar eclipse earlier this morning. Here in Switzerland it was possible to just catch a partial eclipse, but the feeling as the town descended into semi darkness was still incredible. I would have loved to have been somewhere else with a foreground element to provide some contrast to the image, with the sun very high and surrounded by clouds from where I was watching. It was great though to turn the camera on the various people who were watching the event unfold around me.
10:30 rolled around with a pretty impressive partial eclipse
People had come out to witness the eclipse in some grounds adjacent to me
A lone man takes it all in from lakeside
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First Impressions: GoPro Hero4
I put a brief mention on the blog for the latest GoPro when it was announced last September. Since then I’ve sat tight, holding off on a purchase until last week. I needed to get one for a wedding in May that will have a fun underwater element to it, and decided that the Engadin Ski Marathon, which I was enrolled in, would be the perfect chance to get acquainted with the photo controls.
I’m pretty new to cross country skiing so I was happy to experiment with the camera rather than trying to race the marathon distance. I’d heard that despite advancements, the GoPros battery life is still pretty dismal. My GoPro Hero4 comes with a built in display on the rear of the camera, allowing you to frame the scene, scroll though the various menus and settings and playback images. It’s also probably the number one drain on a battery so I disabled it. Whilst disabling that I also turned off the camera beep and led lights on the front of the device, making it a stealth camera.Turning off the rear lcd screen doesn’t actually hamper the GoPro, as a basic screen is still featured on the front showing you what mode the camera is in, remaining battery and space on the memory card. I’d decided on using the timelapse feature, capturing an image every 0.5 seconds. I had previously set the timer at ten seconds, but it proved hit and miss about whether you’d capture a moment. With an image being taken every 0.5 seconds it left a lot of deleting when i sat down to edit, but meant that much more of the event was captured.I’d say the battery lasted for around two and a half hours. I’d love to say that got me to the finish of the race, but I still had 9km to go. I need to train a bit more to try and come in before the battery runs out! Overall, I was really pleased with the results. The camera is so small that it didn’t bother me at all during the race (where it was mounted on my ski pole). I found the controls really intuitive and the results fun to scroll through. A camera like this is never going to replace your main camera bodies, but will definitely be able to go to places where other larger cameras can’t.I look forward to sharing my GoPro images in future, but until then here’s a few more from the race.
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Cool Stuff: Sensor Gel Stick
Cleaning your camera sensor is not exactly the most exciting of topics, but correcting dust spots in Photoshop had recently driven me to the point where I really had to do something. A large portion of my work is captured in areas that out a lot of stress on the camera. Changing lenses in windy, mountainous terrain opens the possibility of tiny dust particles finding their way to the sensor. A simple dust blower can sometimes free up accumulated dust, however more stubborn particles require for the sensor to be properly cleaned.Camera manufacturers offer this service, with many people opting not to clean it themselves for fear of causing some expensive damage. Despite the great service that you can receive, this always requires some turnaround time where you’ll be without your camera, which was something I was keen to avoid. Having scoured the internet to read a host of reviews online, I opted for the eyelead sensor gel stick, which arrived this week. Following along with this video below, I was able to clean the sensor in very little time, removing a large percentage of dust with the first pass of the stick. A more thorough pass made it possible to remove any remaining particles, reducing the time needed to retouch an image in photoshop immensely.Any saved time is a blessing, and it’s these little things that can streamline our workflow allowing us to concentrate on the important things.https://youtube.com/watch?v=KVMIcytrh5A -
Shoot and Show
Towards the end of last year I made an aim to make 2015 the year where I shoot and show. By photographing and displaying my work to existing clients, potential new ones and everyone else in-between I sought to push my technical and creative levels after each meeting. A photography career is largely built on relationships, with initial meetings a test of developing trust between your work, your ability to complete a job (as seen through the eyes of the potential client), and everything else that might be going through the persons mind that’s sitting opposite you.
In order to best facility the shoot and share mentality, I thought it best to build my presentation portfolio from the ground up. I, like most other people, joined the mad rush to purchase an iPad when they were initially released, standing strong on the belief that it would be the sole way to display a portfolio moving forward. Print was seeing a major decline in popularity and the allure of a producing a great looking, backlit portfolio with very little effort was just too good to refuse.
Luckily, times have changed. I’ve got a pretty good range of magazine subscriptions, composed of both digital and print. Some magazines, like Outside Magazine and National Geographic have really great iPad versions of their magazines offered through the Newsstand app. The problem I have with this is that when I pick up my iPad to read a magazine through the app, it’s not long before my attention has wandered and i’m back in the Mail clearing out my inbox. Print feels different though. Despite the decline in popularity of a lot of the printing outlets, some truly amazing titles are on offer at the newsagents. Ultra high quality and extremely readable titles exist (In the Uk I love Sidetracked, Rouleur, Like The Wind, Huck) and when I have them in my hands, they have my attention for much longer than an iPad.
I see the process of making a print portfolio as being very similar to producing one of these Indy magazines – it’s a labour of love. The act of putting all of the pieces together is not an easy one. Selecting images that are strong enough to be displayed and then fit within a series, whilst maintaining a natural flow, takes time. My book is still very much in its infancy but reactions from initial meetings have been positive. Quality was paramount, with me first buying the cover of the book late last year. I was initially headed down the path of getting a linen backed portfolio, very British looking, but all this changed when I saw what the guys over at Shrapnel Design could offer. Based over in Vancouver, I felt that the wooden offerings were much more in line with my image collection. I settled on a Teak with Aluminium back A3 portfolio.
The section and printing of images has been something that has taken up a lot of my spare time as of late. I’m lucky to have been working with a great printer (Photorotation if you’re ever in need of a printer in Geneva) for all of my printing needs over the past year (above shot is prints from a local project, with the below shot from a large commission). Having printed out some test strips we settled on some high quality Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper. 20 pages now sit together showing off a selection of my personal and commercial work. I take a great sense of pride when someones eyes are drawn to an image a little longer, before they turn the heavy weight paper to the next image.Shoot and show you could say.