Chevy Chase Mountain Bike Endurance Race. Isle of Wight.

Chevy Chase Endurance Mountain Biking Event.

Posted on 24 February 2013 by patrickedenphotography

Chevy Chase Mountain Bike Challenge

Isle of Wight, Shalfleet, Cheverton Farm, Event, Endurance, Mountain Bike, Chevy Chase, Biker, Bikers

I was recently asked by the organisers of the Chevy Chase mountain bike endurance event to take promotional photographs. I had been to the course for previous events so was fairly familiar with the layout, how ever quite a lot had been added.
The start was a le mans style through the event tent, this was past the electronic starting gates which tripped the timers for all the racers. This was followed by a dash across the first field to a large bank which is landscaped with some great short ascents, mogals and a terrific steep descent, all through a narrow weaving track fringed by thickets and hedges. A long open ascent across fields with specially built humps and jumps. At the bottom of the valley was a ramp leading to undulating single track through mixed wood and pine forest. The exit was up a long slow drag to a steep zig zagging ascent up the side of the valley, followed by a quick down hill to the finish.
I pretty much brought the kitchen sink with me. EOS 1D Mark II and EOS 5D bodies. 16-35 f2.8, 24-105 f4, 70-200 f2.8 and 300 f2.8 lenses. 2X 1.4X extenders. EX580, EX540 and EZ540 flash guns. ST-E2 infra red trigger. Pocket wizards. Mini tripod.
I tried to keep it reasonably simple, 16-35 on the 5D with EX580 flash and 70-200 on the 1D.
The plan was to just work my way anti clockwise round the course as it was a four hour endurance event.
The pictures I took on the first sections were with the flash on the camera, simple fill in shots and slow shutter pan shots. It was over cast early on, but the sun peaked through the clouds on the odd occasion giving the light a bit of a lift, especially in the sepulchral gloom of the woods.
The low angle pictures were taken while lying flat on my face peering up at various man made humps and hillocks, shot against an interesting and ever changing sky. Some people took them at full tilt trying to get some air, while others were much more circumspect, erring on the downright cautious.
The plan for the forested single track was to use the ST-E2 infrared trigger to fire two flashes place on the ground either side of the narrow path. The best spots were corners where the banks had been built up giving a cracking raised berm to really lean into the turns. I tried to keep the lighting simple no stofens, just open flash. Because it was pretty dark the infra red ST-E2 worked perfectly. This isn’t often the case in bright sunlight, where unless the flashes are in direct line of sight and close to the camera they can be very erratic.
I was going to trigger the flashes with pocket wizards but the ST-E2 worked so superbly I didn’t need to. Shutter speed was set to a manual speed varying between 200th right down to ¼ sec, while the flash was set to ETTL.
After the wooded areas I set up on the chalky drag up to the steep grass area. This time I was using the 70-200 with again the flashes set up next to the track. Unfortunately one of the flashes did not fire because of the long grass, but the one that was supplied enough fill in light to make the dull grey light look a bit more interesting.
All in all I was very happy with the results, which you can see here