I have to admit I have been most impressed with Rapha and in the manner in which they photograph their products. Furthermore, how their photographs blend in with their website as well as the overall feel of being a hard roadie that you cant resist the urge not to buy Rapha gear. When Wade approached me with the idea of being able to take some photographs of him in his Cycling Tips kit, I simply grabbed the opportunity. As I have always wanted an opportunity to replicate the ubiquitous Rapha feel.

The opportunity was unique on many fronts as it allowed me to experience elements of sports, portraiture, and fashion photography. Again I had to push myself in terms of thinking creatively and being able to execute what I had visualized in my head. One of the advantages of doing a shoot in the Dandenong Ranges was the quite roads with barely any cars passing through as well as the spectacular green backdrops of the trees and ferns. Additionally, I wanted to take advantage of the spectacular autumn colors in the ranges as well.

Overall, I was happy with what I had achieved even though post processing in Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta gave me some headaches to deal with :-) .











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It has been almost nine years since I had moved from the land of the long white cloud to come to Melbourne. As a newly arrived Melbournian, one would visit all the top tourist spots around Victoria but in my case it never eventuated. So it took an event like this to force me to make a trip down to Philip Island after nine years. The scenery at Philip Island was exquisite. The weather was gorgeous, sunny warm with blue skies and scattered clouds. To top it off the view to the Bass Coast from the island could be best described as epic on that day. From a photographer’s point of view, I wanted my dark cloudy days which would for a race like this be reminiscent of a day in hell. Mother natures’ great cloud cover provides the best diffuser to make the colours of the jerseys simply pop.

Anyone who has flicked through a copy of Campagnolo’s 2009 catalogue would be very familiar with the picture of Oscar Pereiro on page 12. I was hoping that lady luck would be on my side and present me with an opportunity to emulate a similar shot. Knowing my luck it didn’t happen, perhaps I was overly ambitious. Nor did I succeed with my cork screw style shot, which would have been amazing to see a long curved line of 50+ riders stretched across. On the other hand I managed to constantly change the selected AF point constantly while anticipating which rider was going to make the quick burst of acceleration to surge ahead. Furthermore, the small incline towards the back of the circuit provided the perfect platform to capture the grimace of pain on the riders as they tried to hang on to the ferocious pace of the pack.

One of my plans for the year is to come along to a few races this year and follow a few guys on training rides and photograph. Hopefully towards the end of the year I should have enough material to create a collage of images on a very large poster. If there is any team who is keen on getting a few photographs of their teams in action and have access to a motorbike then please do contact me. Maybe we can organise a trade of services (conditions may apply) :-)

See you out on the road.

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Tour Down Under – Stage 6

January 25, 2010

Sunday morning, I slept like an over grown baby. Most likely due to the pain I was in from the long hike up Willunga hill with 10kgs of camera strapped to my back. I was glad it wasn’t another repeat of Ground Hog Day which I had suffered for the past two days.
I started my [...]

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Tour Down Under – Stage 5

January 25, 2010

Saturday morning felt like I was just like Bill Murray in Ground-hog Day. Yes, I did not have a spot in the van. You can imagine what was going through my mind. Luckily, I called the crew I rode with yesterday and confirmed that there was a seat available. We drove to the start [...]

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Tour Down Under

January 25, 2010

Lastweek I had my belated start to the 12th edition of the Tour Down Under. This was my first time attending this race since taking up riding nine years ago. Out of those nine years, I have spent four years chasing riders through a view finder. My photography was somewhat limited to the events that [...]

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Trampoline

January 20, 2010

Monday morning as usual I was up at 4 am getting ready to fly out to Sydney for my weekly commute to work. For some unknown reason I decided to look up the Sydney Strobist Discussion Forums on Flickr while having breakfast.
A particular thread caught my attention which was Trampoline’s first meeting of [...]

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O’nev M.I.A

January 14, 2010

Well its certainly been a very long time since my last post and things have not turned out the way I wanted to. When my initial post was made during that time my dad had an accident which meant I had to drop everything and head over to NZ to look after him. During my [...]

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Deconstructing O’nev

September 2, 2009

The idea of starting a blog was inspired by two of my favourite photographers, Chase Jarvis and Zack Arias. In particular if you were to follow Zack’s transform video and his subsequent audio interview with Jack Howard.
Personally, one of my biggest goals would be to photograph the three cycling grand tours (Giro De Italia, Tour [...]

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