On Sunday I was keen to ride my mountain bike so I thought I would swing by Appin at around 2pm and try my hand at some mountain bike photography, then do a quick lap when the race finished at 4pm. Mountain bike photography is a completely different kettle of fish when compared to what i normally cover, motorsport. I just loved the fact that I had so much freedom to do what I wanted and being an 8 hour race there was a constant flow of competitors. I would assume rally photography is similar to this except you don’t have to drive 700kms to get to an event and people constantly come past. The freedom really lets the creative juices run free, as the options are pretty much unlimited. You could set up remote flashes, use the sun through the trees, on camera flash, climb a tree, stand on a massive rock, hide in the bushes, the possiblites never end. But the biggest thing for me is that mtb racing is such an emotional sport, which adds so much to photos as photography is all about capturing “the moment” and telling the story of the moment.

Here are a few of my favourites from the day, Enjoy:

Here is a link to all the other photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewmead/sets/72157620161535741/

Here are the digital shots as promised.

All the shots from the day can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewmead/sets/72157619819869842/

Before checking out that link here are some of my favorites from the day, Enjoy:

It’s almost been over a year since I pushed the “bid” button on EBay for a 2002 model Canon EOS Elan 7ne 35mm film camera. The 80$ bargin got me super excited about shooting film and I also quickly purchased some Fuji Velvia film so I could shoot a very similar setup to my biggest inspiration Darren Heath when he was using film to cover F1. Little did I know I actually bought medium format film and was really upset when it didn’t fit into my new film camera. So I left it on my desk to gather dust till another photographer who I draw inspiration from, Linhbergh Nguyen started covering drifting events in the USA with both 35mm and medium format. So last Friday I walked out of the local camera store with 3 rolls of Kodak colour film (2x iso160 and 1x iso400). I think the old man in the camera store was more excited about me, a young man brought up in the digital age, buying and using some film then I actually was. I know why he was so excited…… it made me respect the shutter button, respect the natural light, to wait for the moment and to make it solid in camera rather than “improve it” in Photoshop later. Besides film being so expensive (3 rolls + developing cost me around $70) I defiantly plan to shoot more of it in the future. I hope you enjoy.

For all the competitors on the day I plan to post up my digital shots tomorrow night, so you will have to sit tight till then :). For now here is some film magic (ps I’m slightly biased):

The rest can be found at this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewmead/sets/72157619767587446/

Enjoy

Over the past year or so I have rekindled my childhood love for push bikes, which was consumed in my early to late teens by the modified car scene. Instead of riding down to the newsagent and buying RideBMX and 20/20 I started asking my mum to drive me down so I could pick up the latest issue of Speed or Fast Fours and then once I got my license its all I could think about. Now I barley buy any car magazines as I can get my fix online these days. But as I shoot more and more track days and static cars shoots I get the sense that I need some balance in my photography just like my life is balanced around my three hobbies. Cars, Photography and Mountain Bikes (plus my g/f :-)). As I get older and wiser I just can’t throw all my “eggs in one basket” so to speak, like I use to when I was younger. As of this post I’m committing to branch out to more types of photography other then motorsport/automotive in a hope that it will make my motorsport photos even better.

On the Queen’s Birthday Long weekend I was invited by a few friends to come and take some snaps of old ghetto bikes which they have built up and wacked little 50cc motors on which they race around parks in Sydney. I swiftly said yes without even thinking about it and now I want to build one myself. Here’s some snaps from the day:

Found out more about these bikes by signing up to www.bikesmoveus.com.au and check out more photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewmead/sets/72157619342418255/

All photographers reach a point when they feel their creative juices just aren’t flowing as freely as they use to. I personally think i get this creative block more so then other photographers or maybe i just let it get to me a hell of alot more. Anyway, the best treatment for me is to flush out the system and start again with a blank canvas or in my artistic world a new race track. What better way to do this then join in on a nine hour road trip to Winton Raceway with the guys from Circuit Club to show the dirty Mexicans what we can do both on and off the track. After i got over the fact that i hate sitting in a car for 9 hours, it was a great weekend of shooting and i would defiantly endure 9 hours of driving to do it all again. Thanks to EXE Crew for giving me easy photo access and the Circuit Club guys and girls for letting me tag along. Like always, all images can be purchased by emailing me via the contact page.

All the photos from the day can be found at the following link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewmead/sets/72157618682720021/

Before checking out the link here is a selections of some of my favorite photos from the weekend:

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Thank you

Matthew Mead