And the winner of the photo contest is…
Posted on 25. Nov, 2009 by Josh in Bike Racing, New Media
With 38% of the votes, Kristof Ramon’s portrait of Jackson Stewart and John Lelangue was the winner of my informal Flickr Cycling Photos of the Year poll. You can see the nominees here and read about why I did the poll in the first place here.
Granted, Kristof’s photo was the one that I used in my blog post and he mentioned the poll on Twitter and Facebook. So that gave him a leg up, for sure. Regardless, here’s what he had to say for himself.
How did you get started with the cycling photography project?
I live in Belgium, that alone should explain a lot… Having a passion for cycling is second nature to many of my countrymen. I’m no exception to that rule.
I’ve been working as a (TV)video-director for fifteen years now and during that period I’ve made several pieces on cycling for national tv. Almost 2 years ago I expanded my business and became a professional photographer (commercial and editorial portraits). So now I’m a director and a photographer. As a photographer I grew quickly and acquired new techniques, but wasn’t able to use them to the fullest in my professional work. Being a creative person I really needed these techniques to come out and decided to devote more time into personal projects so I could develop a personal style (without somebody imposing limits)
I quickly decided I wanted to portray (top/ProTour) riders… because that would combine 2 passions: cycling & photography. But one thing was clear to me from the start: I would make NO compromises on how I would portray them AND it couldn’t be in a traditional way… the pictures had to have something ‘different’ about them. That’s when I decided to portray the riders JUST BEFORE the race; when they were preparing to go to the start. I hadn’t seen a series like that before.
Choosing this approach had some other advantages. The most important being: riders have to prepare and wait BEFORE a race. That meant I had more chances of actually meeting them in a relatively relaxed mood. NO WAY this would’ve been possible AFTER a race…
Was it hard to get access at the races?
As mentioned before; I live in (Cycling Crazy) Belgium. From the end of march until early october there are, almost constantly, cycling races (with world-class riders) I can attend within a 100 mile radius of my home.
As soon as the road-races stop, cyclo-cross takes over. Again: at least 3 races a week with all the top riders (over the last 12 years Belgium won 10 world-championships…)
Cycling is an extremely crowd-friendly sport. Riders are very accessible and even with the top-riders you can easily get lucky if you are a little persistent (but always respectful!). Organisers in Belgium don’t have the habit of keeping the crowd away from team-busses at the start of races. So, if you look around and pay attention you can easily walk up to a rider and ask him if you can make a portrait… easy as 123! Although I light my ‘portraits’ with a softbox, they are made very fast: I always make sure I only ‘take’ about 15 seconds of a riders time and I always wish them the best of luck. I work with an assistant to be able to do this.
I was able to do this whole series without any accreditation whatsoever.
Did the riders and teams like how the photos came out?
I heard from some riders that they really liked what I did (via Twitter and via some personal contacts). I was able to send some riders their pictures, wich was nice.
Also the (overall) response after putting them on Flickr and Facebook has been enormous! I simply couldn’t believe how many people reacted and saw them. As a direct result of these pictures it landed me a job with a Belgian manufacturer of cycling-wear and I ended up doing (and restyling) their new catalog. That was simply fantastic!
Now there are plans of perhaps doing a book and an exhibition… these plans are still in a very early stage, but it’s all very exiting!
What’s your take on “mainstream” cycling photography?
If I look at pictures in Procycling or CycleSport I mainly see the same (decent) pictures over and over again. I’m not too bothered with that, but I don’t see much variety. In the case of Procycling there also seems to be but ONE (main) supplier of images: (my countryman) Tim DeWaele. He’s a very good cycling photographer, but it’s pretty straightforward photography. That of course is not his fault, but the photo-editors’. At least have several photographers contribute, to have a variety of styles at their disposal. Tim DeWaele and Graham Watson seem to be the only players in that segment of the market: very good craftsmen who’ve earned their stripes, but 2 is simply too few to cover the enormous range of posibilities.
I’d love to see a cycling magazine that combines the styles of different photographers such as: Stephan Vanfleteren, Tim Kölnn, Brent Humphreys, Simon Keitch, Ken Conley, Geoff Waugh, … that would bring the spirit/passion of cycling onto the pages instead of the more ‘newslike’ pictures that dominate the mainstream cycling magazines today.
I’d also love to see what photographers from different disciplines (skating/surfing/…) would bring to the table if they were to do cycling pics…
Notes
Second place in the poll went to Catherine Wygal’s image of the peloton crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in the pouring rain during the 2009 Tour of California.
Obviously, I’m a fan of Kristof’s work and I think his body of work was the freshest portrayal of cycling that I saw this year. But among the individual images in the poll, I’d have to give the slightest of edges to Walter Bendix Schönflies’ image from Paris-Roubaix.
Thanks to everyone who voted and congratulations to all the photographers who took an unconventional approach to shooting in cycling in 2009.
[...] [poll closed; the winner is here] [...]