PHOTO Highlight: Kitesurf Time Slice

Kite loop Time Slice

See more of his photos HERE

Monday Bike Style: surrender

Hands up if you love Mondays …… Have a good week everyone

Monday Bike Style: tweed

Surfing Tahiti / Teahupoo

that lip is thick

Photographing the Tour de France on an iPhone

Great article from Wired showing that it is the vision and photographer that make great images and not just the best gear junkie …..

 

Bernhard Eisel of team HTC gives an interview at Stage 15 in Montpellier, France.

Mark Cavendish fans watch during the Stage 20 Time Trial in Grenoble, France.

A photographer kisses his camera for good luck before the finish-line money shot during the Stage 20 Time Trial in Grenoble, France.

Autograph hunters go to work at the Stage 20 Time Trial in Grenoble, France.

A boy reaches for a high-five from Fabian Cancellara during the 2011 Tour de France Stage 20 Time Trial.

David Millar starts the 2011 Tour de France Stage 20 Time Trial.

Thor Hushovd starts the 2011 Tour de France Stage 20 Time Trial.

Fans scramble on top of garbage cans to see Cadel Evans on the podium after the 2011 Tour de France.

Spectators reach for handouts at the 2011 Tour de France.

Spectators cheer at the 2011 Tour de France in Montpellier.

View as gallery

There’s no greater misconception in photography than that it’s the gear that makes the photographer (Just ask Damon Winter). In the hands of a skilled shooter, even the iPhone 4’s camera can make compelling images.

During this year’s Tour De France, an event silly with photo pros trying to make a living, photojournalist and documentarian Gregg Bleakney took the opportunity to experiment with using his iPhone to capture the experience as he saw it. No more following the herd trying to get the same shot that everyone else was getting.

Wired.com caught up by e-mail with Bleakney in China to find out why he pursued the project and what it was like working without his DSLR in tow.

Wired.com: So what gave you the idea for the project?

Gregg Bleakney: I’d just come off an assignment at the Giro d’Italia where I was able to negotiate great photographic access and was keen to do something similar at the Tour de France. But I quickly discovered that the media environment at the Tour was an entirely different animal than the Giro — there was almost always a massive scrum of photographers jostling to make pictures of the same “behind the scenes” moments in credentialed press and team areas.

As an emerging photographer, I feel like I should always push hard to separate my work from everyone else’s, and I started to look for another way to cover the event. I was really blown away by the energy and spectator culture outside of the restricted-entry press areas at the start and finish lines of the race; the occasional moments when athletes leave their security perimeter to interact with fans, the security perimeter itself, and with the spectators interacting with each other. So I decided to spend several stages working outside of credentialed areas without a press pass and jokingly dubbed this my “Totally Not Behind the Scenes at the Tour de France” project.

Wired.com: What, if any, obstacles were you faced with while working on it?

Bleakney: Many of the fans were making pictures at the Tour de France with their mobile phones, so I decided that I should do the same if I really wanted to embrace this “NOT behind the scenes” culture. I’d never used an iPhone camera seriously before, and it took some time to get used to both the shutter delay and composing without a viewfinder.

Also, when betting nearly a week of my time and money on a personal project at a major event like the Tour de France, I was constantly battling my herding instinct and internal monolog chatter like, “OK, so I’m NOT going to sprint into that privileged access area to photograph Cadel Evans, or the Schlecks, or some of the other key athletes involved in one of the most competitive Tour de France battles in history, like all of the other photographers — photos which I know that I could sell. Instead I’m going loiter in the spectators’ area to shoot some kids waiting for autographs that no editor will likely ever buy? Why am I doing this again?”

But I stuck with the project idea and used couch-surfing and other social-media travel tools that week to keep my costs down.

Wired.com: How do you feel about documentary work in today’s climate?

Bleakney: I find it absolutely thrilling to be a documentary photographer right now — there’s no better gig in the world for me. Potential outlets for thoughtful photo essays are nearly infinite, and there are incredible opportunities to distribute work that’s executed at a high level to a global audience.

Social media has allowed me to collectively learn and grow with other photographers who are sharing their work and ideas. With that being said, new (post-stock or traditional print media) revenue models are not fully established, and it can be more challenging than in the past to monetize good picture stories — but I have confidence that these things will work themselves out for photographers who really want it.

Wired.com: Where are you currently based and what are you working on?

Bleakney: I’m based in Seattle. I’m working on a long-term project about the sport of cycling’s new global frontiers and have spent time in Colombia, India and China this year, photographing several new events sponsored by the UCI (the sport’s governing body) to encourage growth of the sport outside of Europe and the West.

It’s been fascinating to witness how, for many Western cultures, it’s become so in-vogue to use the bicycle rather than a car as an urban commuting tool, while citizens of the growing economies in Asia and the developing world (who represent the majority of world’s cyclists) are abandoning bicycles in favor of combustion-fueled transportation. I’m also working on a story about a black market smuggling operation taking place in Olympic National Park.

All photos: Gregg Bleakney

Great cycling Websites – downtownfrombehind

Find it HERE

 

Fixies in their natural element

We are off to London so here is a London theme – those mad (wo)and men on their flying machines ….

Photos by Geoff Waugh – connect to the man here

Fixies in their natural habitat; London and in particular east London. These portraits were shot by Geoff Waugh around the streets of Shoreditch, flitting from coffee bar to cafe and stepping out to ambush the unsuspecting riders and commit their image to pixels. This is an ongoing photoproject. Stay tuned for more images very soon.

HERE are some that stand out for me

russian girl with fixie

`low, pro and yellow

1949 BSA - the oldest fixie in town?

Black, green and gold

red or shred

working working working

Been non stop with filming, editing, photography shoots and now photoshop. ~Planning on a run – long in the morning despite the gales and rain …. must go out.

At least the work has been fun. Here is a chair by John Galvin as well as a new photo that I took on Saturday ….

Need to try this technique on some portraits in the bike scene ….

More underwater pics in the clearest of water

Great photos by LUCASURF

 

BIKE SNAPSHOT – images in Baghdad

slow

 

 

sunken houseboat

 

 

palace

 

 

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American Couple Documenting Young People’s Lives Around The World – BikeRadar.

An American couple are preparing for a 30,000 mile cycle journey to document the lives of 20-somethings in more than 50 different countries across the world.

Photographers Alan Winslow, 26, and Morrigan McCarthy, 27, will leave Fairbanks, Alaska in July this year and expect to spend as much as three-and-a-half years on the road. The two, who live in Maine and work together under the title of The Restless Collective, have dubbed their new project Geography of Youth and will share images and stories with followers via digital postcards, posted on the project’s website,http://www.geographyofyouth.org.

“The bike is a great icebreaker,” Winslow told BikeRadar. “In the past when we travelled around America for work in planes and cars to do a story we’d have to park and find our [own] way around. But for some reason when we rolled into towns on our bikes people would just open their doors and chat with us.”

The scope of the Geography of Youth project will be significantly larger than a previous journey, around the United States, in 2008. Titled Project Tandem, it saw them ride 11,000 miles around the US to document the views of everyday Americans on environmental issues. The two have subsequently continued to tour their home country, sharing what they learned through a lecture series and photographic exhibition.

Both Project Tandem and the Geography of Youth share common genesis in the duo’s desire to discover whether the reported opinion around major issues by mass media matched people’s actual experience.

“We were reading a lot of newspaper articles about environmental issues here in the States and we were reading a lot of polls about what Americans thought about the environment, global warming and pollution. But we didn’t think there was enough information or direct quotes from people around the States,” said Winslow of the motivation for their original trip.

“It’s sort of the same thing with our new project,” added McCarthy. “We started reading a bunch of stuff in the newspapers about twenty-somethings and frankly, when we were on our last trip we ran into a lot of twenty-somethings. It struck us in the past couple of years that people in their twenties can lead such disparate lives. Some have children, houses and have settled down, while others are dedicated to their careers, or doing their own thing, or still living with their parents.

“The question we’re asking is why are we so spread out across all these walks of life and we also realised that we are so connected through things like the internet. We want to explore that and find out what life is really like for people all over the world in this age range.”

The two will ride directly south from Alaska along the east coast of Canada, through Central America and across the South American continent. From there they will travel to South Africa, their starting point for a south-to-north traverse of Africa. They will then fly from Egypt to New Zealand. A subsequent leg along the east coast of Australia will be followed by journey through South-East Asia. They will cross the bulk of the Asian landmass by train before looping around Europe. They expect to conclude the trip in Turkey sometime in late 2014.

The sheer magnitude of the trip has made plotting a precise route difficult, with political and environmental factors expected to alter their final path. “If all goes according to plan, which it most certainly won’t, we expect it to take three-and-a-half years,” said McCarthy.

The admitted that they had ridden little before their 2008 trip, essentially using the first three weeks of that journey to build fitness for the months that followed. However, the two have since become dedicated cyclists. Their preferred mode of transport has also made finding subjects for their work as photographers easier – something that is almost certain to continue on their journey around the world.

“There’s something so gentle about a bicycle. It’s not a terribly intimidating mode of transportation and you’re obviously pretty vulnerable,” said McCarthy. “People want to talk to you and ask you questions. They want to chat to you and find out what you’re doing and why you’re on touring bikes. That they allows you to ask them questions, find out about them, and that interaction is invaluable to us.”

Video: The Geography of Youth

With their departure still five months away, the two are working 12 hours a day in an effort to secure sponsors and financial backing for the project. British saddle company Brooks and pannier manufacturer Ortlieb have already agreed to provide material support for the pair. They have also set-up a Kickstarter account, which they hope will provide funding for the North and South American legs of the trip.

McCarthy and Winslow are also working hard to reply to a spate of emails of support that have flooded in since they launched the project last month.

“People have just been writing to us saying, ‘this is great, I thought of doing something like this but I never did, so congratulations and good luck.’ We’re trying to write all these people back because it seems to have touched some sort of nerve, which is great and more than we could have hoped for. So we’re trying to give back a little something to anybody who has reached out to say hey to us.”

People will be able to follow the pair’s progress via the project website and Facebook.

Given the relatively specific focus of their project, Winslow and McCarthy agree that the lines between art, anthropology and journalism are blurred. But vagaries of definition aside, their goal is simple: share what they learn.

“We are speaking to some well known professors – sociologists and anthropologists in the university system here who do research twenty-somethings, so we’re trying to bring an academic side to it as well,” said McCarthy.

“We’ve been asked to define the trip a lot lately. I think we’re really more exploring. We’re trying to gather information out in the world and share it with anybody who will listen. We’ll be using writing, photos and maybe some video to send back, through the internet, all these things that we’re seeing.”

 

Street Bike Series – Snaps from the hip

red yellow pink

Snapped against the railing of the Western Baths, Glasgow

hi speed and after effect bmx film

Great Video shot hi speed in 7D but then slowed down in After Affect.

Edited with Twixtor in After Effects.
Rain was made with Trapcode Particular 2 in AE
Lens used: Canon EFS 18-135 mm
Shutter speed: unknown

Red Giant Trapcode Plugins:
redgiantsoftware.com/​products/​all/​trapcode-suite/​

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A nice jaunt and pretty pic

Great slo mo Tube riding

Law Week 5km Run

‘morning’ he said at 5:45am, ‘I got to bed at 2am’

He’ll be good to run I thought. Drove over to staging and then all assembled ready to race: and then we were off.

19:56

22:06

25:06

25:45

26:06

28:05

29:14

The course was around Z-lake and the temp at 7am was probably just nudging 20 degrees C – nice to break 20min again and roughly similar position 14th out of 500+ runners.

A day and a walk up little Ben A’an

A snatch of the 5 year old away from school for the day, an old neighbour who is a sprightly 79 yo – a 54 yo mother-in-law and a 3 year old daughter all walked up the hill.

I love this shot

One of mine I know so shouldn’t go on about it. Shot in Shetland last summer – stunning light and a visiting starling on top of a boatshed.

© Richard Crawford / AXIOM

bessa line Drawing

Spent some time doodling today

I hate it when things are soft

Would have been a nice photos if I held the camera better on the tripod