A mint track with the most insane top woods ever with the fast steep open bottom section,good weather, better company, and to top it all off a sweet edit and some good photos...
Keep an eye on the new MBUK and WO for a few of the better shots from the race, will try get a few more up soon though...
I am up in Bristol shooting this Thurday then off to the next few world cups etc on Monday, and want to try and get a big blog post on my gear etc
Shot this one for ,certini.co.uk , A bike shop down in Saltash that supports both riders in the vid..
When you live on the south Cornwall coast racing downhill mountain biking isn't the obvious choice...
For Jay Williamson and Adam Lock its all part of it and just something they have to deal with. Watch the video to hear a bit about why they love living where they do, why they don't and see them smash there local tracks to bits...
Right been a pretty good few weeks, busy with work, with just enough free time to ride my bike in between. The perfect mix ?
Anyway, started off with me doing a few days work down in MK for Adventure bikes and Easton Mountain Products, still deep in the editing for those jobs, then it was off to NASS...
Now for those that don't know NASS is an extreme sports/drum and bass festival down in the southwest that me and my mates have been to the last 2-3 years ( I forget )
Its lots of raving, bit of hung over riding, few photos and a lot of really shit food...but great fun.
I have just finished sorting out this years photos which where for WideOpen, go check a few of them out on their site now:
This shot was with the 80-200, at 80mm trying to just the flowing mounds leading you down through the shot from the rider...All natural light
This one was shot just before sun set hence the sick light, again the 80-200 but this time more around the 115mm mark...
This was on the 50mm , near wideopen, bit of music, think its Tinne Tempah but to be perfectly honest I cant really remember it...so yeah, that's that!
And I will leave you with a shot which I tweeted a few days ago of a bit of a peek of some of the recent Saracen bikes related tear sheets that I'm pretty stoked about...
Next up on the list of things to do is a shoot for Certini bike shop of one of their riders and mate of mine Jay Williamson, so that should be good, and then team WideOpen is hitting up all my local trails for a bit of a weekend road trip so expect more photos and half cut ramblings from that, then its off round Europe for a month for the Nat champs, 2 WCs, a week in between then the Wchamps then BDS finals... GO GO GO!
This last week went off to Wales, the Black Mountain Cycle Center to be more exact to shoot a short and simple shredit with Wideopenmags new pinner and test pilot Joel Anderson.
The brief was simple, a 2-3 min edit, doesn't need to be super polished just good solid riding and an intro to both Joel and the venue. Shot in 5 hours with the new Sony FS5.
This was the new cameras first real outing, and first finished product shot entirely on the camera. It did just as well as you would expect.
After talking with a few other Sony users I went for Slog2 with Cinema colour space as Slog3 was just a bit too noisy to trust 100% on a paying job and the end result is no worse off for it at all.
Being both a photographer and filmer, I also got a few still photos on the shoot to go up alongside the full article you can find here: http://wideopenmag.co.uk/2015/12/joel-shreds-the-black-mountains-cycle-centre
If you follow Aspect Media on social media or have looked at our website you may have seen the fact we work closely with camera bag manufacturer Lowpro. We help to test their products and give them good honest feed back after giving the products real world abuse, and we don't go easy on gear doing what we do.
As official production company in charge covering the Enduro World Series its literally our job description to take lots of camera gear out in to remote mountainous locations, no matter the weather and often by riding or hiking bikes to get there. We need gear we can trust, trust not to break when we are 2 hours ride from the nearest road.
Before the new Whistler 450AW came along we where using multiple different bags from Lowepro depending on the specific job ( Vertex, Flipside, Photosport, Pro Trekker etc ) and having to pack extra bits and bobs on the outside of packs and while all this worked well we noticed certain things that needed adding to make one bag that was perfect for what we did day to day. This new bag sorts all our thoughts and worries and they have hit the BB out of the bike park with this one.
First off here is a very short video of Chris and myself testing the bag and proving you can ride with it on:
Main features of the bag we love, as both still and video shooters who have to both hike and ride bikes with the bag on are:
Waist and Sternum straps and back padding are comfy and breathe well even climbing hills in 35 degrees
Way up above Whistler in BC while filming the EWS. Bag fully loaded with the days gear and tripod etc and making easy work of the full on trail. Whistlers famous Tusk in the back ground. Image by Jeremie Reuiller
Packed ready for the day. In here we have 2 bodies, the Canon 5D3 and a Panasonic GH4, 5 canon lens's including the 70-200mm 2.8, 24-105mm, 15mm,50mm and 11-16mm, Flash gun with 2 pocket wizards, radio mics and a rode video mic pro, then in the front pocket all the batteries, cards, cables, ND filter case, cloths, blowers and in the top pocket food, jacket, tools etc
Heading back down the hill with the steady cam strapped on the back and carrying the tripod for speed of getting down the hill, if I was on the bike there is loads of room on there for it. - Photo by Gary Perkin
And again, not small but at the same time as streamlined and slim as it can be to get a body in sideways and not have any issues with pack depth.
We found that with a full face helmet riding jumps or really really steep stuff you had to loosen off the shoulder straps slightly, but the great waist and sternum strap keep it from moving too much, and then it doesn't hit your helmet. Easy!
In the half face XC lid though you can have the thing as high up on your back and tight and comfy as you can and it never hit me in the head in a whole two weeks of riding the bike park and world enduros. First bag that's ever not tried to make me do front flips.
Chilling while shooting some B roll in the USA.The bag its leaning on is our drone bag to give you some idea of size, small enough to not be a pain to carry or travel with but large enough to swallow all your gear.
Another shot proving its not us just saying it, but its a bag you really can get up the mountain ( and down again ) with ease.
So there you have it. A camera bag that does it all. If you bike, hike, ski, board or even ride a horse etc and need to carry a good amount of camera gear is pretty damn perfect. Not something I say lightly, or without testing.
We didn't want to post anything online till we had chance to really put the bag through its paces and now with over two weeks of solid riding and shooting under its belt, I can say 110% that I have found my dream camera bag.
If you guys and girls want to see or know anything else about the bag ( or Aspect as a whole ) leave a comment below and I will edit this post and add it in.
Short and sweet post exclusive to this blog thanks to Fox not being ready to release this video on all the main sites just yet. They said we could post it up on here though so enjoy!
The other week I headed out to an amazing MX1 track in Italy just outside Milan to shoot a new video for Fox Head Europe.
It wasn't moto though, Fox/Redbull rider Yannick had been invited to go out and help make a bike park on the site. A few super hard, hot days shooting for this but it came out well. Check out the video below:
Here are a few photos rad photographer Stephane Cande who was out shooting stills all week got of me working away. Excuse the wild tee shirts.
I took out the carbon jib to get some slightly more dynamic shots. Amazing this fits in my suitcase along with my tripod, steady cam, LED light panel and all my clothes, shoes, chargers etc.
It was a tough shoot on a tight schedule made even harder thanks to more time than we had planned getting the course running, and it being too hot to ride between 11am and 4pm. So three days shooting riding turned into two evenings. About 6 hours total.
Post was turned around super fast as well so the bike park could show the film on big screens at the MX1 race the following weekend to us shooting this. I worked with a good friend of mine and motion graphics wizard Ed Vosper as well to add in some nice simple text animations and a few little touches here and there.
Few weeks in the office editing some other jobs now before Aspect is back off on the EWS circus. Flat out and loving it at the moment.
Every few months or so I update our Stills portfolio of work with new images and the spring 2015 update has just rolled out. Please find it below:
Various new shots from the last few months and a great new layout done by James Webber who designs Wideopenmag.
We have had a pretty full on few months here at Aspect and it isnt showing any signs of slowing down, not complaining one bit! Will get a post up very soon on all of it.
Now while getting yet another cover might not be a huge deal for some photographers, for me I'm quietly proud of this one. I have had shots in various magazines for years, loads of articles etc but a cover shot of a big printed magazine has eluded me, that is until now.
A few months back Boris from MTB Rider Germany said that while I was shooting for an article for the mag with Olly Wilkins, if we got a good cover worthy shot he would put it forward for consideration. Me and Olly pretty much heard that and from then on all we really had in our minds was "lets kill it on one shot and we have been promised a cover pretty much!?" haha
The jump is hidden away in the Surrey hills in the SE of England. Built by Bernard Kerr among a few others its been in various photo and video shoots for a while now, but Olly had an idea that if he hit the main jumps take off, onto a side bank and make it a hip he could get some pretty wild shapes. He wanted the final shot to have him pretty much hanging off the side of the bike, hanny style. That was the only plan, turn up, have a go and see what happened.
So the three shots here ( above and either side ) where the first angle we started shooting. Tried a few lens's from the 24-105, 50mm and 70-200 , tried natural light and some off camera flash.
After that first angle being a bit normal, I broke out the fish eye and started to try that out. Again using the same flash set up to help pick Olly out of the back ground and to give it some contrast.
On the left is the first try with the 15mm 2.8 Canon Fisheye, Good but I needed to move round to the left more so we got his face in, and also closer to the jump so he was higher.
On the right is the second go, much more like it and Ollys position on the bike was what we had been trying to get, I just needed to tweak exposure and nail the composition.
Third time Olly hit the jump with the fish eye on and this is what we got. Finally the image we both had in our head when we turned up an hour earlier. What was also really great on the final cover is how they didn't butcher the shot, they left it very much as it was.
Cheers to Olly for hitting the stinking hip about 50 times and nailing the Moto as hell shape, honestly couldn't of shot with a better rider and Boris from MTBrider Germany for running it as a cover. Here's to the next one!