As we ride out of the sunset of 2010 into the fresh new dawn of 2011 who knows what lies around the corner of the next switchback or singletrack bend where you have to duck under the overhanging branch just so … you know the one.

This has been the first time I’ve looked at the blog since April! On the one hand I can’t believe that and on the other I completely believe it. This year has been a crazy, busy, beautiful, manic, hard, thrilling whirlwind around the planet following people who ride bikes. Its as simple as that!

For me if I’m on, around or even just have bikes on my mind it will be a good one for sure. More so if i can do more evening rides with Molly and Karen and hit the trails with mates something i missed out on for a large part of this year – the back brace wasn’t great for ducking under said branch.

So folks, no great words of wisdom from me – just love your loved ones, cherish the good times & ride your bike! It will make you a better person .. honest.

Cheers!

2010 Absa Cape Epic Mountain Bike Stage 5: Bulls 1 at pace

First off, it’s not Flash TM anymore, it’s just very plain HTML. This will make it easier to link directly to images – which is obviously a double-edged sword. People can now link like crazy … but I’d rather they linked to the pages if you don’t mind. You can also obviously download the 800px wide images to your heart’s content now without having to go to all the hassle of doing a screencap and then cropping. But i do ask you play friendly with my livelihood and if you need to use them for something other than on your own computer please contact me. Seriously, if you do a quick search on google images for my work you will see it scattered across all the internets for all and sundry to see and, given the fact most content management systems strip metadata from images, and thus copyright, it gets kinda tricky to manage that. I am probably adding to my woes moving from Flash TM. But thats a chance i’m willing to take.

I’ve kept the metadata intact in the images, so if you wish you can check out the numbers used to take the photos check it out – maybe this helpful … and maybe I’ll eventually put it on the pages I dunno … we’ll see.

Now before the design guru’s hit me with all kinds of comments and slings and arrows about the layout – you have to remember that these will normally be done in:

a) a rush at the end of hectic week’s work;
b) somewhere exotic like a hotel foyer at 2am because the internet doesn’t work anywhere else, the front seat of a speeding car getting to an airport, or the airport itself somewhere between check-in and departure gate;
c) whenever I get the chance;
d) in an ongoing easily repeatable way.

So this mean’s it has to be quick, simple, and easy to replicate time and time again. To this end I’m talking PhotoMechanic by CameraBits. I have told most people I have come into contact with in the photo business that this software has changed my life – and i really mean that. And i truly thank the Formula 1 photog who showed me light – and whose name escapes me as I type this. Oops – I was obviously so bowled over at PhotoMechanic I forgot his name! UK-based guy, shot for Honda F1? Ring any bells?

Anyway, the speed and ease of use of PM on a day to day basis is amazing. And then you have the extensibility of editing the Export templates as long as you can fudge a bit of Ruby on Rails and HTML. That’s how i built the templates you see in the galleries. Simple, efficient and eminently repeatable. The watermarks, captions, HTML etc are generated on output once you’ve selected your images. Then simply uploaded and linked to my site. I would recommend PhotoMechanic to anyone who takes images on a regular basis. I have no affiliation to them either – I paid full whack for my copy.

Just one final thing, well i guess a repeat of something above, but in other words, there is a copyright statement linked from all the gallery pages, if you’re in doubt about image usage, please check it and try do the right thing.

We headed out of the camp in a similar way to Day 2 so i knew we’d get some more sunrise images … but know having seen my take from yesterday so did everybody else … so i had to find something different again. Thankfully the course ended up in perfect west-east  alignment a couple of times thus throwing up more alternative shots.

Cape Epic Stage 3: Sunrise leaving Ceres

Besides working with great scenery on the Epic we’re also working with a large amount of riders so that helps create great shots in itself – not to mention gives you some time to practice a shot! Here’s one i liked from day 3 showing the numbers involved and featuring one of my favourite photographic devices: recession.

Cape Epic Stage 3: Sunrise leaving Ceres

This year’s Cape Epic was particularly dusty – a combination of the season, the stage locations and not to mention my personal favourite: the TV quads. You can either bitch and moan all day and fight against the dust or you can use it to your advantage. And given the power TV has over these things it’s better to chose the latter as the former is no-win situation right off the bat.

There are certain visual elements i find synonymous with the Epic: Barbed wire fences, telegraph lines and windmills. I didn’t get to see the windmills this year – but more on that later. But i did manage to get some good stuff using the lines the farm boundaries throw up.

Cape Epic Stage 3: Barded wire fences outside Ceres

Next it was time to move away from dusty silhouettes and replace them with water crossing silhouettes

Cape Epic Stage 3: Water crossing near Matroosberg

When shooting from the motorbike you invariably have limited choices when it comes to shot selection, I tend to use the 15mm fisheye a lot … and also the 70-200 2.8. A bit of fill flash doesnt hurt either under the African sun.

Cape Epic Stage 3: Christoph Sauser of Specialized Factory Racing

Cape Epic Stage 3: Lukas Fluckiger of Trek World Racing

Cape Epic Stage 3: Bart Brentjens of Trek Brentjens

Race to finish, swop to 300 2.8 and grab Susi and Burry winning. Check.

Cape Epic Stage 3: Christoph Sauser and Burry Stander of Specialized Factory Racing win

Swop to 70-200 and get some emotion shots under red tent which throws all colours out .. so push colours all over the way to make it look intentional. Check.

Cape Epic Stage 3: Kevin Evans and Alban Lakata of MTN Qhubeka Topeak Ergon

Thats about it for Day 3 from my perspective. Although you only see 9 images here I did shoot 1388 images. But i think these sum up the day for me.

Ok just one more sunrise!

Cape Epic Stage 3: Sunrise leaving Ceres

PS: I have to admit the WordPress resizing of images is not the best i’ve encountered and leaves all of them looking muddy and soft. Will need to work on this for future updates.

When shooting a race like the Epic it helps to know whats coming up so you can plan shots and have an idea when to stay with the leaders or when to ride on ahead to setup for something special. But that doesnt always happen and some days you just have to hope for the best and make use of what happens as you go along. I had an inkling the sunrise in Ceres would be a good one and it took place just minutes after the start, so I was hoping to get some nice backlit dusty goodness … but i was unprepared for how good it was going to be!

Cape Epic Stage 2: Sunrise leaving Ceres

Cape Epic Stage 2: Sunrise leaving Ceres

After spending quite a while shooting this in a multitude of ways we moved on to Eselfontein, but given the sensitivity of the singletrack trails we couldn’t follow on motorbikes and had to duck in and out to a few key points to try capture the day’s action. This always makes it hard to get complete coverage of the racing but thats how the cookie crumbles. And we’d all rather have great singletrack to ride our bikes on than a wide open road for moto’s to work on right?

Cape Epic Stage 2: Silvio Bundi leads the bunch

Cape Epic Stage 2: Platt and Brentjens

As a race photographer I believe we have to try tell the story of the day as best we can with images that show terrain, action, emotion etc and the I try and shoot to that self-imposed brief as much as I can. Given that I’m on a motorbike chasing the leaders over some seriously rough terrain that does present some hazards and hassles in achieving this. And the fact that I’m also usually riding blind into the terrain – I know most of the area from personal experience but I don’t have full access to the entire route and know it inch by inch. That would just be too easy.

Then after racing around the dirt for ages it’s time to plan an escape and make it to the finish for the stage winners … sometimes this mad dash works, sometimes it doesn’t but I usually make it. Sometimes we have to race over the finish line on the moto and ‘win’ the stage upsetting all and sundry but when the leaders are 30 seconds behind you and you still have to swop lenses its the only option.

Cape Epic Stage 2: Pietersma and Brentjens win

Then its time to capture some post-race emotion … and given the intensity and rigours of the Cape Epic this is a fairly easy task.

Cape Epic Stage 2: Platt and Sahm

Then it’s time to ingest cards, caption, tag and all that and get them out to the internets … but not before one more sunrise pic

Cape Epic Stage 2: Sunrise leaving Ceres

Thanks for reading … more to come …

This year’s route is a little different to previous years in that it is centered further north than it has been before – around Ceres and Worcester – so that means more dusty, rocky trails. But as you know I’m more of a pictures person than a wordsmith. So here’s stage 1 from Wellington to Ceres.

Cape Epic Stage 1: Leaving Diemersfontein Wine Estate

Cape Epic Stage 1: Descending Bain’s Kloof Pass

Cape Epic Stage 1: Watervalberg Nature Reserve

Cape Epic Stage 1: Kevin Evans in Watervalberg Nature Reserve

Cape Epic Stage 1: Kevin Evans after the finish

More to come …

You see like the rider’s are in training for the 2010 season so should us photogs be – you gotta keep your eye in, find some new angles, play with new equipment and try see if you can find that percentage difference to make the shots count. Even World Champions push themselves above and beyond in the off season to find their limits and try come back stronger and faster still, like Conrad Stoltz in the image below during lactate threshold & power testing in Stellenbosch.

Conrad Stoltz

But like I said i just haven’t had the time to do that – given book layouts, family life, riding my bike before my exodus from South Africa and prolonged stay in Europeland for the season. Not that i’m complaining about having plenty of distractions from taking ‘proper’ photos. I’ve been taking plenty of iPhone photos mind and those who follow @garyperkin on Twitter can attest to that.

So far this month or so I’ve been lucky enough to shoot runners, swimmers, mountainbikers, olympians, world champions, doctors and celebrities – and sometimes a mixture of all of the aformentioned.

Michael Mol

Dan Hugo

But quite possibly the thing that had the most impact on me was going to Robben Island and riding my bike around the island. Its hard to imagine the impact that years in those cells had on people like Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and the many less famous political prisoners that walked through the imposing gates to find themselves on an island just a few miles off the coast of Cape Town with a release date some 20 years hence for the majority of prisoners there.

Robben Island

In some ways it is similar to Alcatraz in San Francisco bay, an imposing land mark surrounded by water and shrouded in myth and legend, or as in the case today mist and low cloud. But the prison facilities on Robben Island are quite small but yet have an unnerving aura and presence to them. Just a few small details give you a sense that this is major historical landmark in South Africa’s history. I’m no historian so I won’t bore you with the place’s history, all I can say is that the freedom I have to ride my bike and take some photos that mean something to me has been afforded by those who suffered solitude, confinement and loss and for that I’m pretty damn grateful. Nkosi kakhulu.

Freedom