This week marks a new chapter in my career – I will be covering much of the 2015 women’s road cycling season.
It all started last summer, on a fateful evening in June in Schweinfurt, Germany. I was there to shoot a product launch for SRAM and one night, we were talking about future projects. It soon transpired, that they had always had difficulties with finding photos of women’s road races, let alone in a timely manner. It stuck with me and as soon as I got home, I looked into it.
After doing a bit of a research, I realised that there isn’t much out there. The big races are covered to a certan extent, but most races don’t get anywhere near as much attention as even smaller races on the men’s calendar. After speaking to a few people, who know the scene well, I thought this could be an interesting new direction, that I could do a lot to bring women’s cycling more to the fore. It felt like a magical moment: there is a gap in the market and there would be not only supply, with my images, but there is demand.
It also seemed inevitable to get on a motorbike, to make the most of the races, as they are rather short and I have learnt from last year’s Giro and Tour experiences, that covering a race with a car is rather difficult, even when the races last for 5-6 hours. Luckily, I have managed to find a moto driver, a lovely Belgian chap called Chris Dhondt. I had never sit on the back of a motorbike before, so I wanted to try it out before I made any commitments to anybody. We did a trial last autumn and Chris turned out to be an excellent driver, patient, attentive and calm. After the trial run, I felt confident in the saddle and it took a lot of anxiety out of the equasion.
When I set out to shoot cyclocross, in my first two seasons I didn’t have any clients, I was burning my savings to travel to all the races. Only later, on the back of these seasons, was that I started to work with a few brands and publishers. Luckily, this isn’t the case now, my photos will crop up at various outlets of SRAM, Specialized and the Cyclingtips’ Ella, too.
You can follow the season here, too, I will share my shots and stories here. How does my race schedule look like? Find out on the link below:
2015 Women’s Road Cycling Calendar
Though this has been in the making for months, this new adventure will really begin on Saturday. I can’t wait to roll up to my first race. More to come soon.
