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.
Tag: cycling
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Swiss Alpine Passes
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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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First Week of Le Tour
What a roller coaster the first week of this years Tour de France has been. I made the journey up to England for one of the most incredible weekends of cycling for Le Grand Départ. Managing to get out on the bike myself, I relaxed under the blue skies, caught up with friends and talked over our predictions for the tour. Little did we know how much carnage would unravel over these first days. Whilst boarding the ferry, a cursory glance to the skies confirmed the change in weather. Long gone was the beautiful sunshine of the Yorkshire Dales, replaced by heavy rain to greet the riders for the infamous stage 5 and the cobbles. Chris Froome was to abandon early on, having fallen before even reaching the feared cobbled section. For the rest it felt like an exercise in damage limitation.The image above was from the Champagne region yesterday as we made our way to the stage. Not quite the picture postcard image that I had in mind whilst planning the first week of Le Tour, but quite fitting for how the race has so far panned out. With the mountains on the horizon, it can be sure that the second week will throw up many more twists and turns along the way. -
Behind The Shot: Hypersync At The Tour de Suisse
In a previous blog post, i talked about Humanising the Peloton and specifically paying attention to some of the smaller tours that act as the foundations to the Grand Tours (like the Tour de France with its 12 million roadside spectators and 3.5 billion TV audience). The Tour de Suisse is one of the final races before the yearly procession around France, and despite the worlds best cyclists competing in it, I was pretty much alone in a field all day long to set up this shot to feature in today’s behind the shot.I’ve long been inspired to shoot a cycling race using studio strobes ever since seeing the amazing work Brent Humphreys carried out during the 2007 Tour de France. He covered the tour and made a very strong portfolio, including two incredible shots taken from both the team and individual time trial. With this years Tour de Suisse time trial occurring very close to me, it was a perfect opportunity to try and capture something unique.In my bag this day was a Profoto Acute B2 600 AirS, Profoto TeleZoom reflector, 4 Speedlights and a Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 and Plus X.One of the great things of the Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 is the ability to hypersync. In general, the flash synchronisation of a studio strobe is set at 1/250 of a second. This shutter speed really limits the use of flash during a sunny day, especially for a battery pack that is 600W like the Profoto Acute B2. With a little software calibration on the Pocket Wizard TT1 though I was able to make it so that I could push the shutter speed beyond that, freezing the (very fast) action as the riders came by.This shot is an image of Omega Pharma Quickstep rider Matteo Trentin, and it was captured towards the end of the day. OPQS had a great Tour de Suisse with Matteo Winning one of the previous stages and his team mate, Tony Martin spending most of the race in the leaders jersey. I’m positioned low on the ground, practically lying on the floor, with a Canon 1d Mark IV and Sigma 15mm Fisheye combination. Directly opposite me on the other side of the road is the Profoto strobe, with an additional speedlight (which can be seen) behind his front wheel. Directly to my right are two additional speedlights for fill and the sun is high right. I was torn with having the speedlight illuminated behind the wheel and i removed it after this shot, but in this instance i think it added to shot rather than ruining it. It’s very much a case of personal preference on this but i generally stay away from having strobes visible in an image.I’ve had mixed results with hypersync but this shot came out at 1/2500 freezing the cyclist completely, despite the 65km/hr cyclist flying through the field of view of the fisheye. The results are so sharp that you do lose an element of speed, but on this instance it was the style that I was looking for. I’ve wanted to take an editorial event such as a cycle race and make commercial styled images from for a while now and a time trial route provides the ideal studio setting. I was able to move my flashlights freely without interruption and a subject passing by every minute.Despite the tranquility of a day in the fields of Switzerland, I still look to the Tour de France, along with its 12 million spectators, with a great deal of excitement. There’s nothing quite like the carnival of le tour!You can view more of my ‘behind the shot’ series here. -
Behind The Shot: Humanising The Peloton
When most people think of road cycling, one race comes to mind: The Tour de France. Spread across 21 stages and over 3,000km, this carnival of sport attracts crowds in the millions with all roads, in a cycling sense, leading to Paris. What people often don’t know is that professional cyclists do actually take part in other events, often back to back, whilst in preparation for the 3 Grand Tours (the Tour de France is joined by the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta A Espana in the Grand Tour classification).A very busy UCI World Tour calendar sent the riders to The Tour de Romandie, a 5 stage race around the Western region of Switzerland. With many people’s perceptions of riders limited to what they see during a race, I wanted to spend a little time behind the scenes to bring out the real life personalities of the riders around the team buses and away from the bike. Access to the riders is almost unattainable during stages of the larger races, whilst many of the buildup events often have much fewer spectators opening up an array of photo opportunities bringing us to toady’s behind the shot.I’d spotted the Europcar rider, Davide Malacarne the previous day (you can see that shot here) and I loved how at ease he was with his daughter during the build up to the race start. This particular morning i’d challenged myself to shoot purely with the Canon 45mm 2.8 TS-E that has the ability to blur a section of the image, allowing you to pinpoint an area of the photo to be kept in focus. There’s no automatic focusing with this lens and the tilt shift focal pain can sometimes be very frustrating, but with a little patience and practice you can come up with some great results.Walking around the Team Europcar bus I was able to get myself into a non evasive shooting position that allowed me to capture the intimate moment between father and daughter before he set off for work. Humanising the peloton has been an aim of mine for quite some time now, and this image goes to show us that behind every sports personality there’s a functioning member of a family with as many emotional obligations as physical ones. You can check out an extended gallery of the Tour de Romandie here. -
Updated Portfolio – The Tour de Romandie
A new portfolio depicting two days of the recent Tour de Romandie is now available to view on my website (check it out here). With the cycling season now in full swing I wanted to approach one of the lesser known races to document some of the story behind the action. The Grand tours (The Giro D’Italia, The Tour de France and The Vuelta) have strict policies that sees the race route closed for hours before a stage with limited access to the riders. The Tour de Romandie on the other hand allows almost unrivalled access to both the route and the riders giving me an opportunity to cover a number of positions during the two days.
Britain’s Chris Froome came out of a Spring period with question marks over his head due to fitness concerns. All of this was laid to rest though as he showed a dominant prowess on the climb up to the Swiss ski resort of Villars leaving one of his main rivals, Vincenzo Nibali, in his wake. If this is a sign of things to come then we’ll have an electric Tour de France later in July.
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Paris – Nice Kicks Off Cycle Season
I’ve spent hours this winter mulling over the 2014 cycling calendar, with the Paris – Nice proving to be a perfect starting point for a body of personal work that I have planned out around this years road cycling circuit. I have a pretty good idea of action related images that I’d like to photograph during this season, but the thing that excites me most is the lifestyle that you can capture along the way.Unlike the sport, you have little control over what lifestyle is presented to you, with each race or set of fans being unique to that occasion. Once you’ve witnessed the crazy carnival type atmosphere of the Tour de France, the Paris – Nice seems an almost quaint affair. The image above depicts a group of locals ascending Mont Brouilly towards the end of the fourth stage of the tour. Nestled in the vineyards of the Beaujolais region of France, this hilly top just 14km from the finish proved steep enough to really string apart the peloton.This type of cycling photography really is a lesson in preparation. With a round trip in the car of 7 hours it’s important to know exactly where you’re heading on the stage as the athletes only travel past you once (more often than not, all at once too). 7 hours in the car for two action images makes you start to realise how dedicated you must be to grow an action portfolio in this sport. I’m looking forward to mine growing though, along with capturing great lifestyle shots like the one above, en route.