The latest news from Sydney-based photographer Richard McGibbon as he travels up and down the East coast of Australia covering athletes on adventures and high-action sports events and races.
I finally got around to shooting something that I have been wanting to shoot for a while, freerunning. I met up with Dominic Di Tommaso and a couple of his friends at Middle Head in Sydney for a bit of a late afternoon session. It’s certainly an impressive sport to watch and I look forward to shooting some more soon.
Last weekend was the wonderful James Estate Winery leg of the Shimano GP series. This race is completely different for us as part of its course runs through the vineyards and vats of the winery. It’s also a chance for one of us to go up in an ultralight and see and shoot the race from above. This year I was the lucky one and the flight was fantastic.
The James Estate winery is located in the Hunter Valley to the north of Sydney and is one of Australia’s premier wine producing regions. Luckily it doesn’t seem to share the same weather systems as Sydney though as it rained all weekend in Sydney while we were treated to some glorious weather.
Numbers were down slightly in this race but this was to be expected with the UCI World Cup taking place up in Cairns. This year for the event all the goings on were moved to the campsite area keeeping it all nice and central.
The track runs out to a single track on the edge of the Wollemi National Park. It zig zags around there before making its way back into the vineyard and up and round through the vines. Last year I covered the single track and Gil took the vineyard so this year we decided to swap around. Finding numerous various shots in a vineyard is harder than I had expected.
It was another great event put on by Rocky Trail and one of our favourites on the circuit.
Yesterday I went out for a bit of a play around shooting a couple of friends as they explored a few of the bays around Pittwater in Sydney’s North. I have a few trips coming up that will involve kayaking so I wanted to give things a bit of a test run and try to get some ideas for angles and such.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being invited to Cam’s Hillside Dirt Jam. This is BMX dirt jumping at its finest, with some of the best riders around.
Cam White has built up a bunch of big dirt jumps on his land. These are amongst the biggest, if not the biggest, in Australia. Every year, he hosts an invitation-only event, bringing some of the best riders Australia has and a few from overseas. This year, the big overseas name was Mike Hucker Clark, who, prior to the event, took it upon himself to capture a very irate tiger snake (crazy American).
Wind delayed the day’s events, and for a while, it looked like they might have to be postponed, but it dropped off in the afternoon, and things got underway. First through the set was Danny Campbell, but it wasn’t long before others followed suit, and soon, straight airs progressed into some of the wildest tricks I have seen on bikes before. Not being too good with trick names, I’m afraid I can’t tell you even a quarter of what they were doing.
Fuel TV was there to film the events and had their own photographers, so my presence was purely to watch and hang out. I found a nice spot to sit and relax and fired off a few shots while watching the day’s events unfold. Festivities continued late into the night.
A big thanks has to go to Born To Ride Freestyle for setting things up for me. If you like your BMX, swing by his page and check it out.
Below is the highlights gallery and the preview for the Fuel Tv show.
This weekend just past I went down to Greenvalleys Mountain Bike Park to shoot a few promotional shots and check the course out for the upcoming Xup Australia’s Freeride Festival. The guys from Red Bull brought their cool dj machine down and the fellows from Grip Industries swung by but rain got the better of the day and heavy downpours made everything a washout. By the time the rain had stopped, it was pretty much too muddy and slippery to do any riding. The best I could do was send the guys through a puddle. Such is the way of outdoor shoots, they are all weather-dependent.
And it’s on again. After previously being rain delayed the first round of Rocky Trail Entertainment’s Shimano Gp got underway at Awaba last weekend. Rain had threatened with delaying the race again but the weather cleared up and although there was a couple of puddles the majority of the track had dried sufficiently beforehand. I headed up again with Gil to shoot for our project, OuterImage.
It was a great day with a few clouds around which kept the heat down. The clouds make it great for photography as the contrast levels are right down and we are able to control the lighting much easier. Awaba is one of those great track where you can walk 50m and find a new angle with some great shots. I covered the final section of the track while Gil headed off to cover the start and middle section. To mix it up and give it a new feel Rocky Trail decided to run the course in reverse to what it would normally be. As far as photography goes this basically means it’s a whole new track for us to shoot as everything becomes different.
There was quite a few familiar faces out on the course but also plenty of fresh ones. In the end it was Andrew Lloyd who took the honours in the male elite category 7hr and Kirby Knowles in the Female Elite 7hrs.
