Summer's end « Porteous Photography

21Sep/091

Summer's end

After a summer of mixed photographic fortunes, the previous few days have seen the swansong of the sunnier months as I headed out to my first World Cup race on foreign soil. I've shot the British round at Fort William for years (working for the event organisers this year), but have never had the opportunity to shoot the races abroad. To say I was happy to be doing it is a screaming understatement.

The finals this year were in the Austrian ski resort of Schladming, better known for the amazing Schladming Night Slalom race (50,000 people watching the top guns of slalom skiing competing under floodlights), and it's a cracking place to have a bike race. As it turned out, the weather forecast of rain, thunder, and low temperatures was a load of bull, and the whole weekend was bathed in blazing Alpine sunshine - exactly what you want for a weekend's shooting, especially when the last race I shot was the Fort William endurance downhill, which was essentially six hours in the pissing rain and cold.

In terms of the racing itself, there were six individual events - men's and women's races in downhill, four-cross, and cross country. Personally, cross country doesn't really tickle me, so I was following the DH and 4X action over the weekend, which provided more than enough to keep me occupied and entertained, especially as the four cross - in the same vein as the aforementioned ski race that takes place on the Planai piste - kicked off when the sun went down on the Saturday night.

As I've often said on here, I'm always keen to learn more, and most of that comes down to trying new things and practicing them when I can. With mountain biking, my recent aim has been to try and make the most of natural light. The reason I'm keen to do this comes down to variety, especially during 4X races - due to the nature of off-camera flash, you spend time setting up, time adjusting, and time getting some good shots. Given the small amount of time available during the race to re-locate and fanny around with radio kit, I decided to shoot the whole of the 4X at high-ISO, and rely on the floodlights. I'm pretty pleased with the results, but then again, Nikon really have made one hell of a camera in the D3.

After the 4X, Sunday was the main deal - downhill. I shot practice up the hill, and then moved down to the last straight before the finish for the race runs. Again, most of what I was shooting was natural light, although I did play around with flash a bit now and again (as was the case all weekend), just to keep my hand in! The finals were great, and I got what I needed from where I parked myself, although a 300mm lens would have been a real bonus.

So all in, a pretty good weekend. I could quite happily shoot all the races next year if anyone wanted to take care of the financial side of things (I was shooting for Descent-World this weekend, who put up for my flights and accommodation), but realistically, I'm now a fourth year product design student, so I doubt I'll have much of a life until next June. Guess we'll play it by ear, but I don't want to be a stranger to the World Cup for much longer.

Oh, and as a nice little closer, I have a tale to tell. Today, I left Schladming at 6.30am, with Doug driving the trusty Ford Maverick that Hertz had cursed us with when we arrived in Zurich (cheap flights being the reason for the epic roadtrip required to get to Schlad). Plenty of time to make our flight at 2.50pm. Unless you drive for over an hour in TOTALLY the wrong direction, end up near the Slovenian border, before realising the error. Cue 640km of trans-European driving, averaging a respectable 120kph throughout (and a max of about 175kph on the German Autobahn!), and a sprint through the airport terminal to get to the plane before it left. Whether you believe it or not, the difference between us making the flight and being stuck in Zurich came down to a matter of seconds.