I feel lucky to have an association with the Freeride World Tour. This season has been my third year working alongside the team, with a number of great relationships being formed along the way. Over the past year my workload has switched over to the junior Freeride Tour which runs parallel to the main event. Don’t be fooled by the name though. Despite them being classed as juniors, some of the skiing i’ve witnessed by them simply blows my mind.Verbier is the final showdown on the tour and like almost every event this season it was disrupted due to the weather. The juniors event went off without a hitch just over a week ago, freeing up my schedule for the main event that was postponed until this Saturday. I’d received an interesting commission from ESPN to shoot finish line portraits, keeping my back firmly turned to the action that was unrolling. With some of the riders crashing out and others elated with their results, there was a mixed bag of emotions shown in the above images.This marks the start of the end in terms of the 2013/2014 winter. Maybe it will be remembered as the winter of discontent by many. Sure it was a challenging one but productive nonetheless. With the changing of the clocks and the lengthening days i really can’t wait now for summer.
Tag: tim lloyd photography
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Freeride World Tour Portraits
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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. -
Getting Prepared
I’ve been running around this week trying to fit all of the little pieces together before i head off home for the Christmas break. Getting prepared included giving my camera bag a much needed spring clean of sorts, with me adding a Canon EOS 1D Mark IV to my lineup along with a Canon 1.4x Extender II to get a little additional reach from my lenses. The Mark IV version of the 1D has since been replaced by a newer flagship model (Canon EOS 1DX), but with finances to consider I opted for the “cheap” older edition. I can’t wait to get out in the mountains and put this camera to work.Speaking of mountains, the snow has finally arrived (again). Since skiing some early season lines back in November there has been no snow, literally nothing. An extremely cold and dry period fell around the Alps with December not seeing any precipitation, until now that is. Yesterday saw the tides changing and winter seems like it’s ready to begin. A word of caution has to go out at this stage. Despite everyones eagerness to get out there and catch up on the lack of early season opportunities, this unusual weather is about to cause havoc to the avalanche risk here in Europe. The recent conditions have been likened to the 2005/2006 season which saw a record 57 avalanche deaths in France alone. This excerpt taken from Piestehors.com sums it up,
Avalanche expert Alain Duclos cautions,
“we’ve not seen these kind of conditions for a number of years across the Savoies and Hautes-Alpes. The warm temperatures at altitude are unable to refreeze the snow on shaded slopes and this is coupled with a strong temperature gradient. Anything that falls on top of this layer will be particularly unstable.”
Just last week I was sat down for dinner with French photographer [lobo_button url=”http://domdaherblog.tumblr.com” bgcolor=”#fff85f” color=”#000000″ target=”_blank” label=”Dom Daher”] and we briefly touched upon the number of friends that have been lost to the mountains. “Too many” were the words that were mentioned. Lets make sure we all try to have a safe start to this season.
As for the start of mine, after a ski over in Chamonix tomorrow i’ll be heading back to the UK for some festive cheer, along with a couple of running races. Then it’s right back to the thick of things with the Swatch Skiers Cup over in Zermatt as my first port of call. Watch this space for updates along the way.
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2013: A Running Perspective
Over the last few weeks i’ve been watching an incredible series about wingsuit pilots and their search for the Perfect Flight. The programme follows an elite team across the world, with one episode in particular showing the abilities of the cameraman who jumps alongside the crew on all of their flights. Rather than being an outsider looking in, this cameraman forms an integral part of the team with an ability in the sport to match that of the athletes he films.
Wingsuit flying might be an extreme example to lead off with here, but I believe that in order to document adventure sports, a photographer should be able to handle the stresses and understand the underlying principles of each activity that they wish to cover. In desperate search of a summertime adventure, Trail Running came into my life in a big way in 2011. Having taken part in my first alpine half marathon the week prior, I headed to Chamonix to watch the finish of the UTMB (a 165km run from Chamonix to Chamonix around the circumference of Mont Blanc). Experiencing the passionate crowds firsthand (the valley towns around Mont Blanc are renowned for their enthusiastic support of the sport) was all the inspiration I needed to want to feature in this sport. Since then i’ve tried to develop my trail running ability through long days out training, racing ever increasing distances and documenting some of it along the way“
Fast forward to the end of this year where I find myself reflecting on a season where I raced over 650km. Pair that with the countless hours spent out training and a pretty solid running portfolio starts to form. Last year I experienced the otherworldly emotions of running straight through the night, from dusk until dawn. A number of my runs this year have incorporated this pleasure, with one particular race seeing me run straight through two nights. Running through one night might be a charm, but straight through two nights was just nasty.
Having ran my penultimate race of the year this weekend, I look forward to the ski season with a great appetite for snow. I want to work harder than ever whilst trying and maintain a strong level of fitness so that when running resumes i’ll be ready to experience it and document it with the same level of determination that I saw from the wingsuit pilots.
It might not be base jumping, but running is still a whole lot of fun.
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Behind The Shot: Double Ejection
I always enjoy watching how people interact with my work, discussing what they like and don’t like about individual images. This week I was showing a potential customer my snow related portfolio with the aim of them choosing an image to purchase as a large format print. Making images that cater to all tastes is an impossible endeavour. When a person is critiquing your work, with a view to purchase a print, then this becomes even more apparent.”No, no, not this one, umm maybe this one, this is on the shortlist, too safe, next…, wait there, this one!”The image above is the image they chose (they actually bought two). With many of my images focusing on the beauty of the sport when everything goes right, it’s great to see that both the images they chose originate from when everything goes wrong. I can’t wait to see the finished result and i’ll post a shot up on my Facebook Page once they’ve arrived at the office. Update – here they are.In terms of dissecting this image for this ‘behind the shot’ series, this image optimises two things to me: when things go wrong and the exuberance of youth.It’s plain to see that something’s gone wrong here. A cliff drop is the culprit on this occasion, sending the skier crashing to the ground and ejecting both skis in the process. On a list of things that you really don’t want to happen whilst skiing, this has to be right up there at the top. The youth element revolves around the context this image was shot in. For the last two years i’ve worked alongside the Freeride World Tour (FWT), photographing the athletes as they tour across some of the great freeriding resorts of Europe: Chamonix, Courmayeur, Fieberbrunn and Verbier. Running parallel to the FWT is the Junior Freeride Tour (JFT), with this image being from the Verbier stop on the tour.I’ll be the first to admit that I thought that shooting the juniors was a raw deal. It was far to easy to make assumptions on their level of ability and aesthetic quality of their skiing. All of these assumptions were completely levelled once i first saw them ski. These kids rock! The process of capturing images during the JFT fits in well to my style, as i’m able to work my way up and down the face, find a shooting angle and try to get some solid images before moving on.This Particular cliff appeared to be in the eyes of a few of the juniors, and they were all getting pretty roughed up by it. Committing to the line was an all or nothing move, with the winner of the event landing this drop, while others fell by the wayside. I look forward to working with the juniors again this season and can’t wait to see some of their antics on drops like this.You can view more of my ‘behind the shot’ series here. -
New Look Tim Lloyd Photography
Tim Lloyd Photography just got a whole new look.With Autumn having come and gone and winter fast approaching, I thought that this would be the best time to roll this out.Having been working on this for the last few months, I’m excited to announce my newly designed website for Tim Lloyd Photography. Working in conjunction with the guys over at APhotoFolio, I’ve managed to build a HTML 5 website that is optimized to work across all devices, from desktop computers to iPhones. Along with its fresh new look, the website includes user-friendly navigation with several drop down menus. These menus lead to an array of new images and a whole host of previously unseen work.Alongside the main portfolio, i’ve also started from scratch with my blogging platform in the shape of this WordPress blog. I did have a brief fling over at Tumblr, which i do plan to keep up-to-date, but found WordPress to be the more solid platform moving into the future.See below the attached screenshots, and don’t hesitate to tell me what you think of the site. I’m looking forward to the site growing with the portfolio developing over time.
