Always a big proponent of the happy accident, I love the side shots I get while on location. This gent was out mowing his lawn as we were shooting on his street, didn’t even seem to notice what we were doing. But I pretty much needed to get a shot of him in his lawn mowing glory. It’s been a bike-heavy spring/summer so far, which is a good thing, but seeing what I see other than in the two-wheeled realm makes me want to keep pushing to get these kind of people in images. On the less positive tip, my lingering knee injury (torn right medial meniscus) will keep me off the mountain bike until I get the thing scoped. Because I need two weeks to let the knee recover post-op the surgery would punch a big hole in the summer, making me think I won’t be able to get it done until the beginning of October. Goodbye ‘cross season?

I generally don’t talk about details of shoots too often, not in a public forum anyway. Part of that is respecting the client, part of it is laziness on my part, and part of it is trying to keep some mystery in the whole deal. I had the opportunity to shoot Fabian Cancellara, that little dot in the middle of this shot after winning Paris-Roubaix, in the week between his wins at Flanders and Roubaix. I was told we had an hour to shoot him, so I went out and scouted a location for the riding shots ahead of time. Bam, next morning we rolled out to the location and spent no more than 15 minutes shooting him on the bike. Back to the hotel in Kortrijk and up to his hotel room for a shot I’d thought of (worked out really well, btw). Besides tracking mud into his room and getting a teensy bit lost on our way out of Kortrijk, it was smooth as could be. Clocked just on an hour. He was completely professional, but I got the distinct feeling that when he said I had 60 minutes for the shoot I probably didn’t have 65. Still, even though I shot him from 6 inches away in a scene I completely controlled, I think this shot is my favorite of him from the week.

Imagine my disappointment upon opening my packet of developed and scanned film from my 3-week jaunt only to find the scans were, uh, off. That is, the colors were totally whacked, the BW scans all blocked in the detail. Like opening your birthday present and finding a turd (unless you were actually hoping for a turd). There were a few salvageable shots in there, like this one from the Aptos Jump Jam, but for the most part they came in this morning and are heading straight back out tonight. Go FedEx. Still, worth it. As well, Brian over at TWMP did me a solid interview. I’m always a bit nervous when I talk about myself that much, but you can be the judge as to whether or not it worked. http://www.thewashingmachinepost.net/milliman