10 Years
10 years ago, I decided that I liked photography.
A fairly odd statement you might say, but I can pretty much pin it down to that time because of one event - the 2000 British National Mountain Bike Championships, held at Innerleithen in the Scottish Borders. Me and my mate Iain pitched up there for two days, collecting the currency of every adolescent biker-nut the world over - stickers, autographs and photos with the riders straight out of the pages of MBUK (and randomly, chatting to Fionn Griffiths' mum whilst the dual was on). For a 14 year old kid, it was unquestionably the best thing in the world.
I took lots of photos. Panning shots of riders, podium shots - you name it, I took a badly out-of focus photograph of it. But still, the best went in a big clip frame, along with a big bit of the RAV4 branded course tape for added authenticity. Not one of those photographs was passable in any technical sense, but I still felt immeasurable pride in the fact that I had taken them. I still have that clip frame - it reminds me of why I decided that photography was something I wanted to be good at. Of course, the trump card in that frame was undoubtedly the photo of myself and Steve Peat - the downhill equivalent of one of the shiny football stickers that you could trade for major components of other kids' packed lunches.
Why do I mention this (somewhat rubbish) photo? Well, ten years down the line, I've taken a lot of photos of Peaty, and even managed to get the odd one in focus now and again. From SDAs to NPSs, from World Cups to World Champs, he's ridden in front of my lens a boatload of times throughout the ten years since the photo above (check out the images at the bottom of the post), and images of him racing are scattered throughout my photographic development. Ultimately, at one key moment in Austria last September, I shot him whilst competing in the World Cup Finals - the first foreign race I'd ever covered.
In the last few weeks, this image has become an incredibly important photograph for me, as a result of its association with an upcoming event - the event in question being the Fort William round of the 2010 UCI MTB World Cup. With the management company behind the event basing the branding around Steve (what with him being the reigning World Champion and all), my photo is being used as the main brand image; I've been involved in this event every year since 2002 when I volunteered as a course-worker / marshal, so this means an unfathomable amount to me. It'll hopefully be plastered all over the place in marketing material for the race, so keep your eyes open, or take a look on FortWilliamWorldCup.co.uk - the main image in the downhill section on the site is also one of mine. Bit bigger than the clip-frame, but the pride's still there...
Cheers all...