Last weekend I photographed something completely new, a bike ride or specifically the Team Sky Ride Edinburgh 2014. If you know me or ever read anything about me you’ll know before I got into photography my real passion in life was cycling. It’s now 10 years since I last rode a bike but back in those days I was doing over 1000 miles a month while working full time. Cycling was everything to me.
Nowadays as well as weddings I do an awful lot of car photography and one of the companies I do photography for indirectly is Jaguar so when the local dealer asked me if I want to take photos of the local Team Sky Ride from the back of one of their cars, once I managed to sort out childcare, I said yes.
The purpose of this event was to show how Team Sky and Jaguar are working together and to try to get the local community to take part in a fun ride of around 60 miles. On the day the weather was pretty hideous so out of an expected 40 or so riders around 20 or so turned up.
The route took the riders from Pentland Jaguar which is right on the end of Glasgow road next to the Hilton Hotel and very close to the Gyle shopping centre. The ride took the riders through the city and then directly south through Penicuik and very close to Biggar in Lanarkshire. I’ve had the pleasure of shooting a wedding down in Biggar and Lanarkshire, and the whole area for that matter, is desperately pretty.
The event itself was really interesting. There seemed to be some association with a Stirling based cycling team called Velocity 44. I had a few riders and they ranged from “old boys” to Cat 2, possibly higher riders, so a real variation in speed/agility. Myself I sat in the back of the lead car, the first car pictured below which is a Jaguar XF Sportbrake, and pointed backwards to try to photograph the ride. For numerous reasons, including a boot that won’t open for safety reasons while driving and a very nervous driver my job was pretty damn difficult but I still managed to capture some photos that I really like.
The ride in the Jaguar while cramped for myself in the back (I was pointing backwards with my back to the drivers seat) was great. I’ve driven most of the Jaguar range and honestly if I could afford one I would buy an XJ in an instant. I love them!
Aside from my technical difficulties most people seemed to have a good time taking part in the Sky Ride. Certainly the fitter guys used this as a training run but if I was honestly still cycling myself I would have taken part.
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