So thanks to Tom, Jackie, Jasper, Charlotte, Andre, Timiny and of course Karen and Molly for a new year’s to remember … even though we only made it to 1030pm after 3 days of epic bundu-bashing mtb rides.

4x4 only to the destination

Skids really are for kids!

Big sky country

Schmoosza and Jacx

The obligatory silhouette

Epic rides just like the old days

Stormy skies

Santa Cruz Blur TRc in repose

Rolling hills

Last Duvel of 2011

Before and after the Berg trip Karen and myself been riding all the good stuff that the Pietermaritzburg and environs have to offer … Hilton, Karkloof, Ferncliffe and we’ve been joined by a couple of friends from way back in the earliest days of MTB in SA – Patrick Morewood and Mike Van Zyl. Plus i’ve been able to squeeze in the local road loops early in the morning with my dad.

Fabulous Cedara

Riding reward

World Cup singletrack

And then on the 2nd of January, we completed another edition of the Karen Dallimore birthday ride … something we’ve managed to do for about 10 years now i think. Mike joined us again for this – the Karkloof edition.

Karen & Mike @ Karkloof Falls

Karen & Mike @ Karkloof Falls

Mike @ Karkloof

So thanks to all that made 2011 all it could be and as much fun as is possible when standing up to your knees in mud at the side of some hill in a far-flung land. Here’s to 2012 – may all your rides be fulfilling and soul-enriching. Be it to the corner shop, the other side of the world or between the tape against yourself and the clock!

With Cape Town in the rear view mirror we head off ...

Sunset rope swings

Marshmallows for dessert

I, however, ended up being tethered to the toilet with a virulent, but thankfully 24 hour, bug! Not a great start. But thankfully it passed … literally and figuratively! Anyway, 3am Friday we’re back on the road for the long haul north to PMB. Taking the back roads makes the journey so much better – you see so much more of the country and even fewer cars!

Back on the road

Molly stickers up the FunBus

Pietermaritzburg is where i grew up, sort of attended high school and fell in love with bike riding. The combination of rolling hills of tarmac and forest tracks as far as the eye can see make this the place to be for avid riders. It never fails to thrill me to head back on old trails or asphalt routes and see the formative bumps, roots and twists and turns that only familiarty can breed. No contempt here … just super fond memories.

I’m trying to take part in an online festive season challenge called the Rapha Festive 500 - basically you have to ride 500 kilometres from the 23 to 31 December. Well day 1 was spent driving the FunBus to PMB – 14 hours and some change with stops. So day 2 would be tough but had to be done or else i’d lose another day – best thing for it – two rides! One tar, one dirt.

The Dardanelles is a fairly well known loop heading out towards Richmond then back to Cato Ridge and finishing up Polly Shorts – made famous by the Comrades Marathon. I think i rode this loop for the first time somewhere around 1990 … back when Giro Air Attack helmets were the rage. 44 kilometres of rolling hills make it a great loosener and i really needed it.

Flat snake .. size 43 shoes for comparison

The highest point of the Comrades en route to Polly Shorts

Kilos rolling by ... and hopefully off

A splattering of road grit for the Northern hemisphere readers

Next up was a great MTB ride in the forests of Hilton … a place where I started to ride a mountainbike proper. Also the early ’90s but its amazing how the tracks are embedded in your memory. Yes some of the routes have changed, but the overall feel of the place has remained unchanged through all the years. Its amazing … and a thick pea soup mist sure added to the ambience!

Moody trails

Karen in the mist

Feeling like a kid again

So two rides in one day … must be Xmas! Next up the real thing. Happy holidays to you and yours!

G

We all like riding bikes, we all like pushing ourselves on singletrack and unknown trials & we all like to race our mates. So why not combine all those aspects. We’re not doing anything new, just bringing in a few aspects from other types and styles of races and also not limiting ourselves to one discipline. Well actually that’s not true – we are limiting it – to mountain biking! It’s true that the sport has diversified over the years and grown so far from it roots in some respects that its at times maddening to see and at the same hugely gratifying that our little sport is growing up. Its pretty fair to say that at times riding a mountain bike and being a mountain biker are sometimes not one and the same. And maybe cos we’re old skool we all harken back to the those early days where you arrived at a race with one bike and did all disciplines on the same steed – from hill climb, to downhill, XC, bike polo, slalom, you name it. Hence the idea of creating a type of racing that is flexible, varied, challenging and at the top of the list – fun!

Currently its early days – so we are working out the kinks in terms of setup – timing, transitions, liaisons etc. But judging by the grins and whoops at the end of the stages it seems to be working. The idea is get it going nationwide too … but its early days yet.

Sunday’s event had just 2 stages – one from the very top of Jonkershoek – above the saddle and down to the DH and ending near the gate – a 1 hour 45 or so climb and a 10 minute descent! The second stage was a nice technical singletrack on a much gentler slope – so a good mix – not favouring one rider or bike.

Results? Who knows. Someone rode of with our start sheet – but we’ll get them up somewhere soon. But for now the winners are the trails – all the monies raised go straight back into building and maintaining trails.

The view from the top during Monday's route recce

Pre-ride fettling and grandstanding

You can't have 10 minutes of descending without some climbing ...

Or even some pushing ...

The Ace of Spades

View from the top

Another view from the top ... of the way down

Myles' death grip finger after stage 1

Stage 2 with the start of Stage 1 visible at the very top right

Savage sprints for the line

Last turns

Andrew Neethling

MTB Heaven

Pin cushions

Tired but happy ...

* As best as I can translate to Xhosa khwela intaba means ride the mountain. and as best as i can do to come up with a title for this.

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 …

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

Canon 5DMKII 15mm fisheye,  1/800 @ f7.1 @ ISO800

Thats myself, Sven Martin and Damian Breach in Bromont … post and pre rain storms!

Been a wet and wild couple of weeks in Canada … it seemed to rain on and off all the time. I’m sure it didnt it just felt that way. I know we had some good days I have the pics to prove it … but my abiding memory is rain, rain and more rain. I’ve always said it makes for better shots … but when you’re gear is submerged and not working you aren’t going to get any shots let alone good ones.

Still will catch up on Bromont later – those images are still being sent around the place for clients … but wanted to post something anyways cos i have been so slack lately – blog-wise that is. Been super busy otherwise! Mainly cleaning up after the downpours of Bromont! Camera gear took a real beating there with the 5D MKII coming off the worst – and requiring a new shutter. Still it held up fairly well considering the downpour and the type of shots i was taking with it.

The last post in June had a lot to do with shadows so I thought I’d do another of my favourites … reflections. So before and after the 2 Canadian World Cups in Mont-Saint-Anne and Bromont I spend a day in New York City. I’ve been there before a couple of times but its always amazing to see the size and scale of the place. And the crowds! As always I am a pretty crappy tourist – which is pretty bad for someone who travels so much .. or maybe its because I travel so much. But its a great place to play photographically with all the shapes and sizes and colors and all that. But i somehow got fixated on taking some non-standard shots – ie not the Flat Iron Building and not Empire State and not Chrysler Building etc etc … just what took my fancy.

Canon 1D MKIII, TS-E24mm f/3.5L, 1/800 @ 3.5 ISO 400

Canon 1D MKIII, TS-E24mm f/3.5L, 1/500 @ 3.5 ISO 400

In other news, my Cape Epic shadows image won the VeloArto exhibition competition thing in Quebec .. it was a public vote type competition where 10 invited photogs displayed 10 examples of their work alongside some video installations. So I can now officially class myself as an award winning photographer. Ha Ha …

BTW .. I’m working on not one but two books at the moment. The plan is to get them out by the end of the year .. watch this space.

No Exif on cover cos it was with iPhone but original was Canon 1DMKIIN, 70-200 2.8, 1/1250 @ f7.1 ISO 640.

Next up was Bike Action Brazil with another take on the epic shadows series from day 6 of the 2009 Epic:

Then it was the turn of Mike Rose at Dirt Magazine said he was keen on two images I had taken Jill Kintner @ Houffalize as mentioned in my previous post or a Sam Hill shot from Sea Otter … the office vote swung it and Sam it was.

Canon 1DMKIIN, 300 2.8, 1/80 @ 20, ISO 125

Previous to Issue 88 above I had only ever had one Dirt cover – Cedric Gracia railing a berm in the wet in Champery in 2007. So it’s weird that my second one is also a right to left pan from above! Not your standard cover style.

Then it was the turn of Mountain Biker back home in South Africa with a Greg Minnaar shot from the Pietermaritzburg World Cup .. this was actually a landscape shot cropped to portrait – something that i havent had experience with before as I never crop. I always shoot for full frame every time.

Canon 5DMKII, 15 fisheye, 1/60 @ f8, ISO 125, 2 X flashes left and right on PocketWizards.

You’ll notice this is the only image in these 5 that have used flashes. This is intentional, I’m doing my best to move on from the staged, 2 flash, PocketWizard setup stuff – while it is extremely effective at producing results, i feel it is time to move on and return to natural light as much as possible. For example, at the Sea Otter Classic i only used flash to light the underneath of the Specialized pits for a group shot i was doing. I didn’t use flash at all for race coverage and I was pretty damn pleased with the results.

And finally, this is the cover of the latest Dirt! Issue 89 should be winging its way to subscribers as we speak and i’m pretty chuffed with this shot of Steve Peat of Santa Cruz Syndicate from the Andorra World Cup. This shot was intentionally shot to look like and Old Skool cover – straight on, turn action, disk rotor straight up etc etc … much like my mentor Malcolm Fearon could do in his sleep. This was on purpose because Peaty has been tearing the World Cup apart this year with wins in La Bresse – equalling Nico Voullioz’ record – and Andorra – going one better to become the most successful male downhiller in the history of the sport. But also because he had been using the catch phrase – Old Skool is the only school and i’m the fucking headmaster! Pure class. Congrats Peaty.

Canon 1DMKIIN, 300 2.8, 1/1250 @ f4, ISO 125

Just fyi – Dirt did photoshop cables from the chair lift out of the blue sky … just to clear that up in case anyone asks

laters

g

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

g