A bunch of us were up on Wallberg one evening last summer. We’d just finished the climb up to the col and found a pile of perfectly shaped kicker dirt. Rainer thought he’d died and gone to heaven. I took some shots. Dirt was gone the following week.

Nikon D700 + 70-200mm VR1

Pic shows Max and Rocki going for it on the snowy Neureuth trails. Snow was the perfect dry and compact consistency to be able to cruise along nicely on Muddy Marys. No spikes needed whatsoever.

Been doing a lot of night time photography with long exposures and flashes recently so with this one I wanted to try something different: I chose to light the pic only by using Lupine lights. That, and the combination of D700 ISO 4000 and snow reflectance provided enough light bounce to work out okay. The lads had a Wilma and Betty on their helmets, plus, at the bottom left pointing in was a Wilma, bottom right aimed high up towards Rocki was a Betty. All lights at half powers. On the camera I used the Nikkor 20mm* f/2.8 prime at f/4 and 1/40th sec. *This lens is not as sharp in the corners as the stunning 14-24mm but it’s a helluva lot lighter to carry, which, sometimes for me, matters a helluva lot.

Pic shows the night ride gang up on the Neureuth Haus veranda. From left to right: Max 1, Me, Max 2, Bella & Dirk. A cloud layer above Tegernsee provided some nice long exposure light. Pic taken with one exposure and a single flash unit. It’s a shot I have been thinking about for a while, and, I guess I’ve been reading Zack Arias’ blog too freaking much. Lighting aint perfect but for the first try in a temperature of -10°C it aint bad.

Nikon D700 + 20mm f/2.8 + 1x SB24 triggered 4x with an Elinchrom Skyport.

Anybody fancy a night time snow ride tomorrow night @ Tegernsee?

Meeting point:  Tegernsee Bahnhof

Time:  18.45  ( 9th February )

Direction Neureuth…

Lights are mandatory, Spikes optional.

Max and I took a late afternoon push up to the Neureuth Hut. I had a hunch that the trails down the other side would be well trodded by hikers, thus, perfect for biking down. Turns out, for a change, I was right. Max’s front inner tube inexplicably blew out on the way up, and, since we had no tools, it meant he was running at ultra-low pressure on the descent. This pic continues in the vein of the recent B&W’s I’ve posted on here and shows the top trail leading into the woods.

(Nikon D700 + 14-24mm, top cropped slightly).

This has to be one of the finest adventure tours I did in October last year, and, I’m sure it’s going to turn into a modern biking/hiking classic. Guess it’s only right that Garmisch local, Fabi, was in there on the first descent. Okay, some of the really steep steps on the upper section he walked, but pretty much most of it he rode. This pic was taken on an awesome  rock slab about 100m vertical below the summit at about 6pm in the evening. Head torches had just been put on since we were about to hit darkness in about half an hour or so.  In fact, pretty much all of the second half of the trail we rode in darkness with lighting provided by the superb Lupine Betty’s. I published a couple of pics from this day already, and this one is also a favorite. It’s taken with a Nikon D700 &  Nikkor 14-24mm, and, even though I did have the flashes setup here, I chose to switch them off for this shot. Glad I did because I much prefer the silhouette version.

Pic taken in Spring 2009, B&W conversion done now.

Riders are Max and Harald.

Pic was taken a while ago now. A couple of things recently reminded me about it and kinda motivated me to have a rummage around a hard drive and find it again. There were reasons why I did bury it on a hard drive, I suppose, because the real fun that evening started 5 mins after this pic was taken. Alas to say, it was quite a late one back to the car…

Nikon D300 + 10.5mm fisheye, bulbed out for a while with some flashes zapping in on the rear shutter to capture the rider.

Pic shows Martin Söderström during the practice session at White Style 2010, Leogang. For this shot I was sitting on the edge of the launch ramp and had my Nikkor 70-200mm vr1 dialled up to 160mm and the camera set to 1/250th sec, f/6.3, iso 250. At 1/250th because I was using flash (could have gone to 1/320th but didn’t need to); my two trusty Nikon SB-24’s can be seen on the left on top of Austria’s highest light stand. Flashes triggered reliably using Elinchrom Skyports. What can’t be seen is Max – he was keeping the light stand steady and doing the fine directional tuning, which, is something that doesn’t come as standard yet with Skyports;-) Perhaps a remote controlled / motorized directional tracking system for the flashes would be cool, or, even just joystick control from the camera’s RF trigger to set them up with. Mmmmm….

Spent some time in the Igloo experimenting with some high-iso / no-flash panning pics of the riders starting. This was taken at 1/30th sec with a Nikkor 16mm fisheye on a D700.