Porteous Photography The photo blog of James Porteous

Times Ten

My photographic work tells the story of a man who loves taking photos, but more than that, it'll tell you first and foremost that I'm a man who learnt his craft shooting bikes. It's a powerful teaching tool. I don't know many other subjects where I've seen photographers pick up such a range of photographic abilities as they do through shooting downhill racing. While there are other sports that cover off many similar areas - any motorsport will teach you about panning; any ball sport about shooting with long lenses - few can tally up to what can be gained from spending time at the side of a muddy bike track, railing off frame after frame at passing racers.

The affinity with bikes carries across to an event I've talked about before - the Fort William World Cup. I've worked at or for the event for the last ten years, in some capacity or another - a course worker with a barely-healed collar bone in 2002; the event photographer in 2009 and programme writer every year since the Worlds in 2007, including 2011. This year was a bit of an odd one - my other job (I'm a designer with a London-based consultancy) has taken me about as far away from my roots as it could - I'm now living in North London, where hills are pathetic little things with no sense of grandeur or circumstance about them. Photographically, I've still been shooting, but nowhere near the intensity of what I was doing before I moved down here, and certainly not involving any racing. With that in mind, I knew that I had to go to Nevis Range this year, if for no other reason than to remember what a bloody mountain actually looked like.

It was a hugely rewarding trip. I shot for myself, tried out some ideas that I hadn't done in the past, and got some images that made me grin. That's my life measure - the ability of an experience to make someone (me, you, anyone) spontaneously smile. If there's teeth, it's a winner. I spent time with my mates, talking about the years we've all been going to the Fort, and I spent time lying in peat bogs, covered in mud, fiddling with remote flashes and swearing at a lack of memory card space. I was working and I was on holiday, like it always feels like when I'm doing something I love. Without getting overly philosophical on you, it was a trip back to a country that I've been out of for six months, and it was one that's still giving me food for thought right now... I find that this seems to happen each time I head home. But anyway, I talk too much. Here's ten from the Ben, and a bonus - the bottom one's worth a click to see big.