Searching for new perspectives

Cycling photography has now become one of my new challenges - but cycling photography is and isn't like a lot of sports photography. Most sports are confined by the dimensions of some preordained space - a field, a court, the pitch, or the pool. What ever the imprisonment, it helps get ‘the shot’ for a hungry media, but seriously strains at the coattails of creativity. Let’s face it a lot of daily sports photo coverage is insanely boring – celluloid clichés (alright, now they are digital derivations).

Cycling in most of its incarnations has one enormous photo advantage - it is played out through the villages and countryside of the world – anything with a road or road-like surface is fair game. As a Frenchman once asked me while I was cycling in the French Pyrenees, “don’t you have high mountain roads in your country?” yes, I explained, but we don’t pave a road over every goat trail up there like you do. Photographically this yields a wealth of opportunities. What other sport enables you to cast your actors in an amphitheater of soaring granite and glacial sheets, or against the sun washed stone of a thousand year old Tuscan village. The disadvantage – they never stop moving, never.

The Pros (cycling photographers) have the distinct advantage of a moto” – perched on the rear of a motorcycle with credentials to zoom in and about the peloton (cycling’s big group of riders) as well as venture a field for unique perspectives and return to catch the race action.

As one without benefit of ‘moto’ cycling photography has presented some new and interesting challenges to me. (I’ve also turned to my previous wildlife work for inspiration – there too the ‘game’ is played out in the uncontrollable arena of life.) Fortunately I have no editor sitting anxiously waiting for ‘the shot’ to grace the front page of the sports section or the fleeting lead web story for the day. That freedom gives me the liberty to take some chances – something I just don’t think photographers (regardless your experience) are willing to do – the hell with it, go take a chance, screw up a little, you just might strike gold – accidents are the birthplace of genius.

The Boston Globe posted some of the best photos from the recently completed Tour de France – as you can see, some cycling photo pros are trying to find that new perspective – enjoy.

Over on my cycling website – BicyclingNorthwest.com – I am co-sponsoring a bike photo contest with local Portland shop Pro Photo Supply and Canon cameras. I hope that photographers of all levels and approaches get creative – taking advantage of the millions of opportunities the bike, its infinite habitat and characters, to create some very cool images. Here’s a link to the 2009 Bike Photo Contest.