Concentration

A mud splattered rider navigates the top of a hill and the turn at USGP Bend. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 10-22mm at f/4 1/1000 ISO 100

The corner is upon you even before you are completely up the hill.  Your heart is pounding in your ears and your breath is coming in ragged gasps as everything in your body cries out for you to stop.  Not this time, this time you will keep going, this time your wheels will not stop or even slow, this time you will rule your body and even though every cell in your body feels a leaden weight your mind wills it forward.  You find yourself having torn the heavy curtain that draped you in pain and it all falls away.  Your body still hurts, every part of it but it fades into the background and your heart keeps pumping and your legs keep pushing and suddenly the bike is a little lighter and you feel it jump under you.  It wants to go faster, and so you do.

One of the great things about cycling is the access that regular people can get to world class races and racers for little or no cost.  There are not many sports where you would be able to walk up to the best in North America and have a talk and take a picture.  This extends to the race itself and how close you can get to the event and the riders.  In this image I am inches away from the front tire of this rider, (Norm Thibault, one of the great driving forces behind cyclocross on Vancouver Island, Cross On The Rock) and that lack of distance gives this picture an immediacy that would be impossible to achieve in any other way.  I was close enough that we can see the dirt flying off his wheel and the mud speckling his face, there is a lot of dirt in cyclocross.  This weekend I was also interested in getting some non-traditional points of view for cycling photos so I really wanted to get down low and shoot up at the riders.  I was able to do this by sliding down on my belly on the side of the hills and pointing my camera  up at the riders.  There’s lots of dirt in photography too.  

This will be the last of my posts on cyclocross photo but you can check out the best of my images from the USGP Bend 2012 Race in a gallery here.

-Russell Berg

The Hill

A racer launches up a hill as spectators heckle at USGP Bend 2012. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 17-55mm at 42mm f/4 1/400 ISO 1600

The panicked crush of the start is behind you and you can feel your breathing start to regulate as you settle in for the race.  You feel strong and steady as your bike tracks well through the turns and you feel good about your choice of tire pressure as you power out of the turn without loosing traction.  The first big hill is around the next corner and you see the first three racers ride it successfully but it is a tough hill and the next group of riders hits the hill in a clump of six, the racer at the front wobbles as he hits a rock in the hill and sticks his foot out right in front of the next rider who is charging hard to try and create some separation on the hill.  He hits the leg and his front wheel slides out from under him.  Suddenly three riders are down and everyone else is swinging their legs over to dismount and run; run around, over, through the fallen mass of elbows and wheels, calves and handlebars but they will reach the top. 

More photos from USGP, Bend 2012.  I went back and forth on the cropping of this image.  I really felt like the most interesting story here was of the 3 old guys yelling at the top of the hill and the to a lesser degree the boy below the rider.  Cropping the rider’s head and shoulders out of the image lets your eye rest on the old guys yelling and then drift down towards the boy who is watching so intently.  Somehow those parts of the story were diminished when I left the rider’s upper body in the the image.  Cyclocross has its roots deeply planted in Belgium where old guys who have been drinking most of the day yell at younger guys as they race around the course.  Heckling is part of the sport.  I wanted some of that old-timey feel to this image so I put converted it to B&W and increased the structure and the grain to give it a slightly older feel.  I also like the way that the increase in structure helped to bring out the impressive musculature of this rider’s calves and thighs.

For more of my images from this event check out the gallery here.

-Russell Berg

Off The Start

The chaos and danger of a whirlwind cyclocross start at USGP Bend 2012. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 10-22mm at 11mm f/4 1/800 ISO 100

You sit at the start, one foot clipped in, sitting on the top tube of your bike.  You are trying to look casual, unworried, yet focused but the nerves in your stomach belie the calm exterior.  Your mind pushes around the course searching for the right lines, the small advantages, the wider places to pass until you hear the starter’s warning.  You stand up your left foot still clipped in ready to propel you forward.  You shake your hands and then calm them, bringing them down to the hoods.  You feel the solid response of your bike as let your weight settle on to the bars and you love this machine.  You know that it will take you where you tell it, that it will jump forward when you mash down on the pedals and together you will fly with grace and speed over any obstacle that lies in front.  And then… you hear the horn…

My daughter and I went down to Bend, OR last weekend for the USGP Cyclocross races, it was an amazing weekend with a lot of fantastic racing.  I really wanted to capture the frantic energy and chaos of the start of a cyclocross race.  At this point the racers are all still packed together very tightly and to capture all of that I knew that I needed to get close.  I positioned myself inside the corner of the first sharp left hand turn of the course and chose a wide angle lens.  A wide angle lens shot up close gives a very interesting perspective and immediacy to the image.  There is, of course, some distortion and stretching of the image but the ability to pack so much story into one frame is worth it.  You do, however, have to get very close.  The front of my lens is probably something less than 4 inches away from the woman’s shoe in the foreground.  They are going by so quickly and they are so close that you have to trust your preparation, make sure you have a good angle and have memorized the sweep that you want to make with your camera as the cyclists go by and then hammer down the shutter and hope you get something great.  I got several good frames but I really like the wheels within wheels effect that this one produced and the fact that the lines of the photograph and lead you towards a very clear image of the rider out front.  (Who, by the way is Wendy Simms, a fantastic local Nanaimo rider.)

For more of my images from this event check out the gallery here.

-Russell Berg