It’s crazy to think that we’re approaching (or even passed?) the midway point of winter 2015. I remember skiing in Verbier on the 9th November thinking what a great start we were having. A good mixture of naivety and enthusiasm took hold back then, but I didn’t actually ski again until after the new year. December in the Alps tend out to be largely miserable, with large doses of rain falling instead of snow.January picked up, with fresh snow making clients eager to shoot, playing catchup on the stalled start to the season. My working pattern across January and the beginning of February was very much contained to a 48 hour window, usually involving snow-forecast.com.Lets see what the second half has in store…. 
Author: timothy_lloyd
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Winter 2015 – Midway
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Instagram Year In Review
Instagram has become my go-to social media account throughout 2014, with an image being uploaded by myself almost everyday. Unlike other media outlets, Instagram apparently doesn’t sleep at the weekends, with a constant flow of interaction being posted throughout the week.For that reason, i’ve decided to take a look back at 2014 through Instagram, with 12 images capturing a snapshot of each month of the year. Today we’re up to August, and are firmly caught up in the summer trail running and cycling antics. I’ve added captions to all of the images, that you can see over on my Instagram account, but here’s a quick look at the images that have been uploaded so far.JanuaryFebruary
March
April
May
June
July
August will find its way up there later today, with the remaining months being uploaded each day.I’d love it if you’d stop by my account to check it out —>>> www.instagram.com/timlloydphotoI’m also always on the lookout for new and inspiring photographers to follow on Instagram. If you think there’s someone I really need to check out then just let me know.
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Phase One IQ250 and Capture One Pro 8
I just returned from a great couple of days over in Munich, where I had the opportunity to test out the Phase One IQ250 camera and their RAW converter software, Capture One Pro 8. The invite came from the camera bag company f-stop, who have been working in collaboration with Phase One to educate their staff pros in both the hardware and software that the Phase One produces. Excited by the prospect, I made the trip over to Germany along with a select group of other European photographers for an experience with these amazing camera systems.As you can see in the shot above, the system I was shooting with looks like the quality piece of equipment you’d hope for with such a high price tag attached. For approximately €35,000 you’ll be able to afford a kit consisting of the IQ250 digital back, with a 654 DF+ body and 80mm lens. Medium format cameras nearly always carry the high price, so many will not be surprised by the large amount for the camera. The question is though, why would Phase One put a camera that has traditionally been used in studio conditions in the hands of f-stop pros, who are renowned for specialising in outdoor and adventure photography?This is where the money starts being accounted for. The IQ250 digital back carries a new 50mp CMOS sensor that revolutionises low light capabilities. It allows the camera to capture images when in low light situations at ISO 6400 with very little noise, just like a pro DSLR that most of us are accustomed to use. Older sensors are often unusable after ISO 800, so shooting as the sun went down would be almost impossible, along with freezing action with fast shutter speeds. This new sensor allows the camera to become much more versatile, including being more suited to be used in outdoor environments, fitting the f-stop photographer profile exactly.In order to experience the cameras, we headed over to one of Munich’s most famous attractions, the Eisbach river wave. With about 20 minutes to play around with the camera, I made my way around a sport that I rarely shoot and tried to capture an image or two that I liked. I loved the intuitive feel of the camera, along with the reassuring sound that accompanies a medium format camera as the shutter release is pressed. I did find the battery usage to be a little frustrating. The camera I had a chance to use lost performance pretty quickly in the cold temperatures. I wonder how many batteries i’d have to carry around if using this system up in the snow? I’d say that was my only initial qualm though as everything else screamed quality including the ability to sync with the Profoto strobes at pretty much whatever speed I wanted and the 3.2 inch touch screen. I was never too sure about having a touch screen on a camera, but this felt buttery smooth to scroll through the shots as they accumulated.Once done, it was back to a small gallery to be shown our way through their RAW converter software, Capture One Pro 8. Being a Lightroom user for a good few years now, i’m always a little intimidated to see new software. My initial reaction was much the same this time around despite having had a few days to play around with it before meeting in Munich. Honestly, I was blown away by it. Having sat through an hour tutorial to show us the basics, I felt comfortable enough to edit all of the images that are in this blog post. I’d heard that the software was superior to Lightroom in the processing of the images and having imported some of the shots to both programmes, I can see the difference right away.With first impressions at a high, it will be interesting to see if I make the switch to Capture One Pro 8 for all of my work. The question of whether it will be easy to find a balance between both programmes so that my workflow remains efficient is one that will be answered in the coming months.In the meantime I just need to find some deep pockets as I feel that the move over to medium format cameras in the outdoor world is a trip that I don’t want to miss.
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Cool Stuff: Black & White Challenge
The Black & White Challenge has been circling amongst photographers for a while now on Instagram, with the challenge to upload 5 B&W photos for 5 days from fellow users of the application. I find myself in the midst of a love affair with all things Instagram related. Alongside Twitter it has become part of my daily routine to upload an image from my library, along with gaining a dose of inspiration from the people that I follow myself. I love discovering new people to follow and am often blown away by some work that, up until that point, i’d never heard of.Back to the challenge. Honestly, I thought i’d got away from this one. As the weeks rolled by I managed to escape nominations until an Instagram notification popped up on screen yesterday evening. The nomination found its way to me via good friend @atlasfoto (Online Portfolio). Mark and I met whilst he was based in Sun Valley over at the American HQ for Scott Sports. Despite being in the area for skiing, we ventured out onto the springtime trailhead and our friendship was born over an early morning trail run. The rules of this challenge are pretty lax, with no subject taboo or any timeframe to the images. I’ve been dying to go way back into my library for a long time, so i’m going to start this challenge with the image above.Living in japan at the time, I went through a period of devouring everything camera related. I’m not sure the situation now but at the time you could pick up extremely cheap second hand equipment to try out. This shot was captured with a Canon film camera, I forget the exact model (perhaps the EOS 300) during a vacation to South Korea in 2005/6. I’ve always had a bit of a fascination with all things war related, so a trip up to the Korean DMZ was first on my list. Panmunjom is the meeting point of the North and South, with ‘Conference Row’ consisting of a number of buildings where each side can meet whilst remaining in the comfort of their own country. There’s no freedom of movement between these two borders and in this image you can see the North Korean soldier watching on in the distance.The quality of the scan is not so great, but it remains a strong memory, and a nice place to start this 5 day challenge. I’m not sure which direction the next four days will head, but follow me over on Instagram to see how it all pans out.If you don’t like what you see i’ll no doubt be back to posting pictures of mountains next week.Update 02/12: Here’s the remaining 4 images that I uploaded during the challenge. It was a fun week, just as predicted.
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Recent work: Hour Record
The hour record has had somewhat of a chequered past since its inception. Rules and regulations have meant that the field of professional cyclists have largely stayed away since Ondrej Sonsenka set the mark in 2005. With the UCI no doubt taking advantage of the resurgence in popularity of modern track cycling, they’ve relaxed the rules surrounding the bike specification making the hour record a target for many.Recently retired Jens Voigt set the most recent record in September, reintroducing the cycling media to hour record and all its fanfare. This record would not stand the test of time however, with the locally based IAM Cycling showing their intention shortly afterwards. One of their Austrian riders, Matthias Brändle, was the rider to take it on at the UCI’s own track at their Aigle based headquarters. It was not an easy task for Matthias, but one hour and 51.852km later he emerged victorious, beating Jen’s mark by around 700m.I set out to photograph the event in a pretty distinct style, using the Canon 45mm T-SE lens for a large percentage of the images. I sometimes even doubled it up with the Canon 1.4x extender to create a unique look. One of the great things about track cycling is the regularity of the rider crossing your path, with Matthias going around the track somewhere in the region of 300 times. Such regularity allowed me to focus exactly on what I wanted to capture leaving me with a small portfolio of images that i’d like to share with you.You can head over and see the full hour record gallery here —>>> THE HOUR RECORD.
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Look Back At Le Tour
I woke up to the first snow fall on the Jura range this morning, with winter starting to poke its head out. It might be nearly time to put away the road bike and get out the skis but with the route of the 2015 Tour de France having just been announced in Paris, there’s just enough time to take a look back at Le Tour from this summer.
With the tour starting in England, I was quick to drive up and experience the first three days with friends. Catching up over a bike ride, a few beers and those crazy Yorkshire crowds was a great way to start the tour. Once the English section of the race was done, I switched to work mode, photographing Tinkoff Saxo, Trek Factory Racing and IAM Cycling for a client. In total I was on the tour for 9 out of the 21 stages. It’s a logistical Rubik’s cube trying to piece together the various stages as they unfold in front of your eyes.Here’s an image from each stage I attended from this years tour. There’s plenty more to check out over on my Le Tour micro site.
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Cool Stuff: Storehouse App
I feel like i’m sometimes late to the party with content creation applications. It took me two years to sign up to Instagram, with me cursing missed opportunities as soon as I realised how great it is (find me @timlloydphoto). Pair Instagram with Twitter, and a large chunk of my social media presence is focused between the two.Storehouse is an IOS app that I had zero knowledge of until reading the blog of Vincent Laforet last week. Vincent is working in an advisory role for Storehouse, and is doing a pretty good job at getting the word out to photographers and other creatives to gain more of a community over on the app. Storehouse lets you construct a story in very little time directly from your iPhone or iPad’s camera roll. Simplicity and speed are two key features here allowing literally anyone to create a great little story feature with hardly any design skills required.Of course I wanted to try this out for myself, but was unsure about a subject for my first story. I try to keep my Instagram feed stocked with quality images that i produce for my work. With Storehouse though, I wanted to have a bit of fun for this first tryout. A friend of mine pointed out on Facebook that a lot of my recent images featured a dog.Dogs! exactly. What a perfect place to start.
To talk you through my workflow here, I made my way through my 2014 image library and dropped any dog images into a collection in Lightroom. I then synced this with Lightroom Mobile which sent the images over to my iPad. Then I simply sent the images from Lightroom Mobile to the Storehouse iPad app, dropped them in, changed the order and added some text and was good to go. Things can get even simpler if you have images on your iPad or iPhone camera role as you can upload them straight from that.What I’m liking most right now is that, despite the story being constructed on an IOS device, it looks great on a desktop computer. You really can drag and drop a collection of images and publish an amazing looking project/album/diary/drawings/videos etc in no time.I’m really looking forward to the community growing and seeing how this develops. Head over to the Storehouse website to check it out a little more, and take a look at my first story – “Dogs Life“
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Capturing Myself
Autumn is in the air and the landscape is changing rapidly, with the Alps currently looking near their finest. I had a clear schedule this weekend so I set myself the challenge of capturing myself in an action self portrait. Wanting to keep things in Switzerland, I found three locations that all offered something a little different aesthetically. This first image was taken at the highest point of Villars ski resort, just as the sun was setting on Friday night. Despite being one of the first stops of the weekend, I think this came out as my favourite shot.Saturday came around and I ventured just across the valley to the Portes du Soleil. All of the images in this blog post are self portraits, with a tripod mounted camera being triggered by a pocketwizard remote (look closely at the images and you can see one in my hand). Using a fast frame rate I was able to work around my shortcomings as an athlete, including having a goofy running stance, belly hanging out (which is very easily done in Compressport), or a horrible gurning face. It also meant that I could capture sequences that didn’t quite work out. Like this one.
This second day almost had an English Lake District type feel to it, with the terrain working perfectly as camouflage for my feline companion.
Sunday was all set to be a down day, so I didn’t expect to get much from it. Waking up to a blue sky but with the threat of the afternoon closing in, I quickly made my way right to the edge of Switzerland to the spectacular Emosson dam. I’ve been up here once before to Photograph an 80km trail race and was blown away by the views. Ideally I would have ventured higher up into the mountain range but time and weather was not on my side. It’s funny how I had to hike for about an hour on the first two days, whereas the dramatic views of Emosson were 5 minutes above where I parked the car…
So there we have it, 3 days of shooting and a couple of different results. All of the images carry a slightly different vibe, but as a group go to show of how beautiful Switzerland is right now. With the colours starting to pop, it makes me want to stay outside all day everyday.As soon as those first snowflakes start falling the trails will all be over until next year. -
Behind The Shot: Running For An Image
I’ve spent a bit of time looking at my portfolio this week, shuffling around certain galleries like my Alpine one. I want to start making gallery edits that are indicative to my style of working across the seasons. With a gallery containing 20 images, of course there is a number of them that required transport, with chairlifts, trains and helicopters all playing some part. There’s even one image in there that simply required me putting down my breakfast bowl of cereal and stop watching CNN for a minute to capture.Out of the 20 images in the gallery though, 7 of them were captured whilst running, a stat that i’m quite proud of. Recent posts across the summer have highlighted the fact that i’ve been attempting to travel as light as possible (like in this post about my f-stop bag), often with me hiking to certain vantage points with my full camera gear or shooting in a more documentary style way with minimal equipment.The image above gravitates from the latter style, With this image of the Cabane d’Orny being taken from below Cabane du Trient up at 3,170m, just after sunrise one Sunday morning in September. I’d initially been invited to join friends to stay the Saturday night up at the Cabane du Trient, but having just flown in from Corsica, time wouldn’t allow to get me up there that evening. With a favourable forecast I had two aims for this morning; catch up with my friends on their way down and grab some sunrise images on the way up.waking up at 4am, I drove over to beautiful little village of Champex-Lac situated at 1500m. With around 1,700m of climbing ahead of me, I set off on the steep path up to La Breya illuminated by my head torch. A few years ago I experienced running through the night armed just with a head torch and the thrill is something that doesn’t go away. Even as I was pushing through the clouds with just a few metres of visibility, adrenaline was flowing through my veins.
Arriving at the lift station of La Breya the path ventures into high alpine territory, but actually becomes much easier to navigate. Despite having another 1,000m to reach the summit, the path seemed to flatten out and with first light approaching, my running partner took some time out to sit for a head torch lit portrait, tail still wagging ferociously.
The dawn of the day gave me a new lease of life and I was able to push on hard, marvelling at the views that were unfolding around me. I’d seen this area of Switzerland from down in the valley before, but the sheer beauty of it up close with the cloud inversion below, really is breathtaking. As with a lot of my light adventures, I was running with only my point and shoot camera, the Sony RX100. With an old Nintendo Wi wrist strap attached to the camera, i’m able to run pretty freely with the camera in the palm of my hand. Despite taking a few bumps along the way, this camera functions amazingly well when you need to be light on your feet but still want quality images.
With the sun now illuminating the sky, all that was left was to make it up to Cabane du Trient. Taking a wrong turning at the previous refuge, i’d ventured onto the glacier and knew that my friends were most probably starting to make their way down on the higher path. This turned out to be the case as arriving up at Trient I found a relatively empty refuge with a quite remarkable view over to Aguille du Tour.
Making my way back down the correct path towards Cabane d’Orny, finally everything aligned and I was able to capture the image that acts as the main focus of today’s blog post. Looking at the image now it could be easy to spot some shortcomings and say how things could have been done better. Of course with a much higher resolution camera and expensive glass this could have been made differently, but that kind of defeats the purpose. The path from Champex-Lac to Cabane du Trient is advertised as a 5hr40 hike. Moving lightly with minimal equipment I was able to get up there in just over two hours, capture the sunrise and cloud inversion, meet up with my friends (I found them at Cabane d’Orny) and give the dog a pretty damn good walk.All before breakfast.
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Cool Stuff: GoPro HERO4
Everyone expected GoPro to be announcing the HERO4 earlier this month at Photokina but with no announcement forthcoming, the internet was set ablaze by rumours as to when it would be announced.Today on the GoPro website, the await is finally up as the company has publicised the release date along with the latest promo video for the new product. With the view count on youtube currently saying 300, i’m sure by the time this evening rolls around it will be up in the millions. There seems to be a cult like following to GoPro and having enjoyed some great images from the previous model, I look forward to seeing the new HERO4 when it comes out in October.For a rundown on the exact specifications head over to the GoPro website, otherwise just sit back and enjoy this latest promo video.