The Tour of Britain is the UK’s most significant professional road cycling race with this multi-stage tour occurring over eight days across the UK. It attracts World Tour teams that you'll see on Le Tour as well as British squads so represents the crème de la crème of road cycling. The race passed the end of our road so I thought I'd pick up a camera and walk down.
Shooting with a Leica isn't normal sports photographer fare and I did question the wisdom of leaving the Nikon behind with its telepathic predictive tracking and video adjacent frame rates as I set off. I felt a bit like Josh Paul who shoots Formula 1 with a 1913 Graflex 4x5 View Camera. Fastest cars, slowest camera. I had no forgiveness and unlike an F1 circuit, I didn't have a second chance with subsequent laps.
I expected to have no more than 2-5 seconds at most so needed to find a decisive moment or composition. One of the challenges is the flow dynamics of the peloton and the relative motion of the group - riders in the centre don't have to work as hard to maintain pace due to the reduced air resistance. Their lack of visible exertion and body language doesn't translate into a dynamic image unless panning and using motion blur but that's hackneyed.
I elected to shoot on a progressive and quite acute bend which would naturally slow the riders and force them into compositional groupings and dynamic angles as they leaned into the racing line. I also wanted to have the riders looking to camera, expecting that they would do so as they traced their exit line out of the corner. I had to be on the inside edge of the corner and some track day training at Silverstone (cars, not bikes) factored into my thinking to help predict their road position as well as my shooting angle and vantage point on the bend.
The weather forecast was showing that heavy rain was due and we'd already had light showers in the morning so I considered the possibility of shooting with standing water on the edge of the road and bringing a degree of abstraction into the image. Wet tarmac also creates texture but I couldn't see the peloton running wide enough to make the shot work.
Looking at the race footage, I worked out that there were 24 seconds from when the riders first appeared in frame to when the last rider in the peloton exited my viewfinder. I also ended up on the race footage and was around a metre from the riders.
I have a notional interest in road cycling but I bought former pro cyclist and now photographer Kristof Ramon's book 'The Art of Suffering' last year and it gave me a renewed appreciation for the sport. Kristof's photography shows deep empathy for road cycling and reflects his proximity to the sport as a rider. Knowing your subject also allows you to anticipate and better predict big moments and where photographic opportunities may lie. The book itself covers 15 years of his work and is best described as a love letter to road cycling. Other talented photographers in the space whose work is equally engaging and has a beautiful aesthetic sensibility are Harry Talbot and Russ Ellis.
I enjoyed the technical and creative problem solving required to get the shot I did and the deviation from what I normally photograph but I think I'll leave the lycra to the photographers I shared above.
