Time, once again, to catch up with my blog postings … not very good at being on time with these – not that there’s a schedule or anything. More often than not his is sent to the to do list of whatever GTD application i am trying to get to grips with to improve my productivity on the road – like Things or Evernote or what have you … they’re not really working are they when you consider the Houffalize World Cup that the title pertains to happened at the beginning of May and we’re almost in July. But there are reasons for that.
Canon 5DMKII, 50mm 1.2, 1/1600 @ 1.2 ISO 125
It’s hard to strike a balance between showing off the images taken over a weekend and keeping exclusivity for clients – be they magazines or commercial clients. So I have to try and hold off posting images to flickr, twitter, blog, flipper.co.za before they become seen and all over the place. Sometimes all I want to do is post them up and get them seen … but that has got me into trouble in the past so you’ll have to bear with me while i send them out to clients and magazines to be previewed, selected, ok’ed etc etc.
Canon 1DMKIIN, 70-200 2.8, 1/250 @ f9 ISO 200.
Anyways, onto the weekend in Belgium for the Houffalize World Cup. That place has MTB history like no other. The fans love it, the rider’s all want to race it and we photographers want to try and capture that essence. This year was a first for the town with a UCI World Cup 4X taking place in the traditional XC venue. How would they mix? Would the 4X be long enough? Well the course was great, weather was perfect and it all went off without a hitch. Save for the ever changing generator-driven lights which made color shots almost impossible at night – unless you wanted them green, orange or blue depending on which phase you took the shot at. Hoo hum …
But before the lights came on there was some glorious light to work with for some backlit goodness – always a fave in my book.
Canon 5DMKII, 15mm fisheye, 1/800 @ 2.8 on ISO 100. Shot in B&W on camera.
XC was tough though with a super long loop for the lap meaning you have to hike it around the Belgian countryside looking for different shots that you haven’t shot over the year’s of coming here - thats the downside to tradition and history i guess. As i said in the previous post i got stuck between the valleys of the race course and missed a lap of the men’s XC … not a good thing. The thing to bear in mind at this point is to try and recover as much as you can outside of the race with other shots to ensure you keep clients happy.
A parting shot of Jill Kintner in the 1st turn at Houffalize – this was a contender for the cover of issue 88 of Dirt Magazine .. but lost out to another of my pans – Sam Hill at Sea Otter.
Canon 1DMKIIN, 70-200 2.8, 1/60 @ f18 ISO 100.
As you may have noticed i’m putting in some more metadata for these images … maybe someone gets something out of that. Or maybe i’m giving too much away 
Update: Forgot mention, some more of my coverage of the Houffalize World Cup here:
- http://www.flipper.co.za/gallery/Houffalize_2009/
- http://www.littermag.com/2009/uci-4x-world-cup-houffalize-belgium-qualifiers/
- http://www.littermag.com/2009/uci-4x-world-cup-houffalize-belgium-finals/
laters
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