I browsed through my Adobe Lightroom catalog and selected some images from my various photos shoots in 2009…

This came out exactly as I intended to which was awesome. Jordi was visiting me in Cape Town for the weekend. These jumps were just down the road from where I was living. One of the jumps on the other side was an FMX landing complete with metal take off ramp which I never knew until I rode over the peak.

The World Cup was a lot of work. I had tried to race the national the weekend before but DNS’ed with a broken bike. Before that I had helped here and there with the track building and can easily say I walked up that hill more than anyone in the world. With either a bike or a camera I cant even begin to count the times I found myself versus that hill. The peak of covering the event for me was falling on my ass while walking up the hill with the videographer from Yeti and then later falling down it on the 4x track.

A bike is not just for christmas, its for life. I shot this and a few other photos with a broken thumb. Dave Dinkelman SMS’ed me to come ride at their trails down the road from his house. Out of action I had a solid day shooting photos. The air was polluted with a lot of dust which I was loving and the light just seemed good all day.

I found just the right angle here to make Kyle Gifford look like he was on top of a mountain. We took this shot at Giba Gorge where I shoot most of my riding stuff.

The man that made a difference to the world: Chadd Bain.

Colin Loudon is always fun to shoot with. This was taken shortly after he had finished the new trails at Giba Gorge and we had been shooting some riding stuff. His Dad spotted this rainbow behind as we were talking so I ran and positioned my one remote flash and got him to throw down a dead sailor with the rainbow. A few seconds later it was completely gone.

I am not a fan of crashes because they hurt, cost money and most importantly secure you that non-podium place. I do like this shot because the race is going on as normal and it is as if the rider looping out is going backwards as well as being upside down. Almost surreal and like a glitch in the matrix. The little guy got up right away and was fine. I watch for the sketchy riders in practice and position myself behind something when I see them. To date I have not been hit by a rider.

Sabotage. I got the rider I was shooting to yell they were about to hit the corner and Kelvin Purchase appears instead of them. What was odd is that I had no idea he was even at the track so I am surprised I took a shot of what I saw in the viewfinder.

Muddy Mark Malherbe. A flat tire had Mark working his Blue Steel overtime here.

Your time is my money so if ever you do a shoot with me the first thing I say is: “No cellphones”.

I spent a lot of time doing this with Nigel Hicks in 2009: pushing. Just like surfers, Downhillers have to work hours for those few minutes of adrenaline.

To send it home ever further and to have an image that alludes to an exit as the last shot here is even more bike pushing. We spend hours and hours doing it yet hardly ever see any photos of it.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 8:30 pm and is filed under Features, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.