Pictures

Trailaddiction and Eastern Mountain Sports are runnning an ad with some of my favorite shots. Head on over to http://www.ems.com to check it out! But attention: it could make you want to go to the French Alps.

The pictures themselves are from Les Arcs, France where we rode with Trailaddiction last fall.

I will be expanding my hobby, the bike photography even further. As stated in my review of 2009 I want to have at least one picture in print this year. To do so the first step was to build a portfolio site. It was launched this weekend and can be found here:

http://photo.morgi.ch

I hope you like it. You will find many pictures I have never published. Now the next step is banging on doors to get a cover or picture-page print. I'm considering any magazine you might know that fits the style. Any hints or contacts are welcome and very much appreciated.

You can get regular updates about the pictures on Twitter (as photomorgi) or become a Fan of the page on Facebook. I thank you in advance for helping make a dream come true - and hopefully enriching the world with some nice pictures.

What does this face tell you?

"Is he on my tail? I am so going to blow up in the next 20s if I haven't lost him..." - or something in that range. It looks like it hurts.

The whole Sixdays was a big showdown, the last home appearence of the 20+ year allstar Bruno Risi and made for a couple of pictures.

Sometimes people take it too literally when I shoot pictures and ask them for a "test run". Like René two weeks ago in Flims:

On that day we met Nino Schurter heading out with a bike camp of some sort. Nice to see him not only advertise for the region, but ride there as well. He's a nice guy, pretty shy - leaves me to wonder what the fame and glory of being World Champion will do to him... he must be having a hard time with the journalists.

Actually we ourselves did a lot of riding on the Trail 247, but a year after my first pictures there I couldn't resist and redo a couple of angles and find some new ones like this one:

And one of the favorite shots describing the end of the season better than any words:

Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia.  ~H.G. Wells

 Zermatt - famous for the Matterhorn, the car-free village and the tourists but not as a bike get-away. Still as a ski resort it is equipped with lifts and therefore qualified as an "end of the season" weekend trip with our local bike club. As I have already mentioned the Matterhorn is a very stunning scenery and the trails are also not too bad. Naturally I couldn't leave my camera at home...

Upon arrival you park your car in Täsch and from then on it's public transportation or human powered. In Zermatt the lower lifts are not actually lifts, but trains. Smiling is advised if you travel in a bigger groups and put your bikes everywhere - other than that it is well organised and you can make the bikes fit.

We first ascended to the Gornergrat which you can see in the map here. Up from the top you have the magnificent view down to the Gornergrat glacier:

The Matterhorn is also in plain sight. From there we rode a singletrack down to Riffelberg. As many times in the Alps, the upper part was gnarly and contained big rocks. Later it sloped out a bit more gently.

With the Summer dwindling to an end I'm trying to get the last big rides in the Alps in before snow gets in the way. Therefore I'm very excited about going to Zermatt for the weekend. Camera and numerous willing biking models are tagging along... And the Matterhorn is probably the most picturesque mountain known in Europe. That spells "WOW" if I can find the right spots and a steady hand. So brace yourself. Be back Monday.

Had a great last day of the photo course today. We did a short session in the morning up at the Transarc, stopped home for lunch and headed out again with the bus.

Just in case the altitude and big backpack training this week hadn't caught on yet we did a nice 500m climb on rocky fireroads. But I must say the place Alistair had spotted out was pretty fine for some evening pictures! The man himself did his best to turn out some action pictures:

The spot was well worth it - not only for seeing how far you can get a 9 person van with trailer up a sketchy mountain fireroad. Sorry I wasn't there to see them turn the thing around...

This time we kept it quite tight on the photo session and headed down a magnificent singletrack sizzling down the back of the mountain and running into a barely car-wide mini-canyon all the way down the hill. We agreed it had to be one of the best Singletracks in the world.

I think it was the first time second time this week that we made it home in time for supper. The traditional bye-bye-BBQ was also the end of the season here tonight. A big thanks out to our trailAddiction models of the various days! You might not be able to tell from the pictures, but each pictures stands for 5-6 "ride-and-run-back-up"'s. Not only did they model, they also did a good job guiding the group and giving some technical advice. (To say the least about the fun we had.)

I hope we made up to the rest of the trailAddiction bikers for our weird behaviour (first out, last in, least miles ridden) with a decent slideshow of the week's best shots. As I go back tomorrow I'm sure I can spend a couple of hours on the train sorting through more of the pictures to show you and thinking about all I learned and what is still to learn... As for now, I'm calling it a day! And if you liked the pictures, stick around Seb's blog to sign up for the next photo course. I'm sure I will!
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Read more about Seb Roger's Photo course in:

Les Arcs - Day 1

Les Arcs - Day 2

Les Arcs - Day 3

Les Arcs - Day 4

Les Arcs - Day 5

Les Arcs - Day 6

Today was a long day, even if we didn't catch the first morning light. Here's a short account and some pictures.

First thing we hike-a-biked up to "the lakes" for some shots:

From left to right: David, Seb, Rich and Niels working.

After the early start yesterday we started today off a bit later. The morning we spent working through the theory of remote flash: getting a setup of one radio triggered flash per person and moving the sources of light around Seb. Until he started to feel more and more akward - having his picture taken around 15 times per minute for an hour...

During those still shots I kept wondering why my camera wasn't turning out tack sharp pictures. The last couple of days I had blamed it on my and a shaky hand, but was I shaking up still shots...? - It turns out that my autofocus doesn't work like it should! At least I was getting an explanation for all the bad shots of the last couple of days! - I will have to send my camera in for repairs and do most of the focusing manually the next days. Bummer in one way - but at least I know it's not just me who has been messing up the pictures.

After lunch we set out to take some pictures. Tom and Alistair did their best riding down pulling "having-fun-riding"-faces and running back up for the next shot. Unfortunately we only had time for two locations before the extremely heavy rain set in. We barely managed to bag our equipment until the skies broke loose and within 10s we we're soaked.

We got back fairly early in the evening and did a recap of the day: we loaded all the pictures onto David's laptop and watched them on the TV screen. I must say as for my portion of the shots yesterday evening made for more amazing pictures in quality and quantity, but today was not a day with a less steep learning curve. And right now I'm sorting through the old pictures processing the good shots. There are a couple of good ones!
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Read more about Seb Roger's Photo course in:

Les Arcs - Day 1

Les Arcs - Day 2

Les Arcs - Day 3

Les Arcs - Day 4

Les Arcs - Day 5

Les Arcs - Day 6

Day 2 of Seb Rogers Photo course had us waking up very early in order to catch the nice morning light. After a quick "off the records" breakfast we headed out at 6.45 o'clock. Luckily we had a van, a driving guide and two other guides at our service. The van was the most practical since we ended up chasing the sun all over the valley since we wanted: 1. sun 2. trail and 3. a view. This proved quite hard to get - I was just glad most of the searching was done in the van, not on the bike. Seriously, I like to ride, I like to ride my heavy fully up a mountain if I can go down on the other side - but with a 7-8kg bag of camera equipment on your back it's hard work!

So in short: we ended up ditching one of the 3 necessary points we were looking for and just shoot. Our guide Ben was really upping the action pictures, but I was having trouble managing catching a decent one.

No harm done though: the trails were magnificent once again as we swung back to the chalet for a brunch, a run-down on the morning's pictures and a long lunch break. While the other guys held a classic siesta our two guides were going out for a ride - so I joined. Nice to ride the trails without the heavy backpack! Thanks to Ben for the massive technical tips! You could sum them up in: "You're doing all the techniques right, so all you need to do is go a bit faster." - We got in two runs until we were due back at the chalet to pick the others up for the late evening session of what was to be THE most scenic spot in THE best light with THE best rides...

I'm currently in Les Arcs for Seb Rogers biking photography course. Here's how the first day went:

After traveling on a beautiful Saturday and waiting up in Geneva‘s airport for the late flights it was more than a pleasure to wake up to bright sunshine and gradually rising temperatures on Sunday. The photo course „class“ was Niels, David and me - with Seb being the teacher. At the magnificent 3-course dinner the other night we had laid out the basic idea for today: do a recon and not take a camera. Basically just ride and figure out where to shoot the next days. I wonder how we ended up all taking a camera nonetheless?!? I think it had to do with Seb mentioning that he hadn‘t had another backback besides the camera bag to take lunch and water in - and he was taking the camera! As we set out then, apparently all four of us had packed at least a camera and a lens.

From our chalet in Moulin it was a quick trip uphill to the first lift of the day and a second short downhill got us to the second lift where the week passes were waiting. This is also where we realized that in setting off with all the other non-photography bikers staying at our chalet we had managed to loose Seb! But he eventually turned up and we set out for our recon.

Our two guides Alistair and Rich led us into Singletrack from the very top to the bottom of the lift we just came up. On the way we stopped once or twice to discuss a spot to shoot but it wasn‘t until the second descent we started to adjust the day plans and squeeze in some first basic shooting techniques. Alistair and Rich had to do a good deal of lugging their bike back up the hill but proved to be great models. Like most of the shots to come it was hard not getting either another biker or photographer in the picture. I quickly learned that it wasn‘t going to be „flick a switch“ to become a better photographer, but hard work and lots of practice. But I had some success moments to build on. And besides that after every shooting there was an awesome singletrack waiting.

I had a very nice day of riding, really relaxed even with the heavy gear plunked in my backback: the protection strapped to my shins, elbows and back did the trick. So I found myself not only riding the trail (and enjoying it!) but also trying to make out the next spot to shoot (as instructed by Seb) and a next little rock or ramp to launch my bike off of... Talk about multitasking!

The weekend in Magglingen was great. The weather was perfect, the trails were dry. I realized it's been a while since I shot "real" pictures and therefore I really wanted to break out my camera and my remote flash for some more trial and error.

My fellow bikers were worthy and helpful partners in crime - reriding a section several times and posing for the picture. It still takes a while for me to get the setup right for a decent picture and I also notice the longer it's been since the last shooting the longer it takes me to get back into it.

I put the remote flash to the lower left of this picture and triggered it with the built-in infrared. This works pretty well in the shade since there is no visual interference like the sun or other obstacles.

After getting a kinda decent picture I rode the section myself and René pointed the camera - and got a good shot pretty soon:

 

2008 was a year of Did Not Start, Did Not Finish (1 race) and Did Not Ride for me. A year for the books. I guess I won't look back. I hope 2009 will contain more riding and less health issues. In retrospective I learned to value good health in 2008... I used to have too little problems to understand what the people meant when they wished for good health. Now I do and "health" has just made the top of my "what I wish for"-list. But now for the main reason of my post: 2008 in pictures. I will not break with this tradition, it might be a bit poor this year on riding pictures of me but I hope to make it up through my (still improving) picture taking skills.

January:

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After talking about the easy tips for better pictures I want to share some more tips with you. These will take a bit of practice but are still fairly easy to do for anyone.

The hints for today are: Move the camera with your target and be off- center.

I took a lot of pictures today and I'm getting a hang of my new picture editing program Aperture. Way cool!

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