If you’re flying aboard British Airways this month and you grab the latest High Life Magazine you’ll see the feature written by Angus Powers, which  I shot with this year’s Red Bull BC One African Cypher winner Bboy Meaty. I shot the feature on the new Hasselblad X1D mirrorless camera which Sunshine Co so graciously trusted me with and I must say I fell in love with that camera, as in I got separation anxiety after handing it back. It might not be the most suited camera for shooting action stuff, which Meaty will confirm after I made him repeat his moves over and over again until I became one with the delay in the shutter but man, is it a beautiful piece of equipment. The touchscreen display is so intuitive and easy to use and the general feel of the camera is so solid and that shutter sound is just the cherry on top. Working with such large resolution your focus has to be on point and the peaking display really is invaluable here and makes manual focusing such a breeze. Thanks for letting me jam with your baby Hasselblad South Africa – I wouldn’t have trusted me 😉
Here are some extra images that never made the cut which I still like:
And this is the camera (didn’t have anyone else to shoot me with camera so took these off Hasselblad’s website)
Lately, I’ve been feeling like I don’t play enough with my photography. My style of shooting has predominantly been influenced by the jobs I’ve been shooting which usually entails multiple angles and a daunting shot list. It’s meant that using flash at events would slow me down and I wouldn’t meet my requirements.
In February the opportunity to experiment with flashes presented itself so I jumped at it. DARK FEST, Sam Reynolds’ contribution to the FEST Series calender, saw eight of the best MTB Freeriders in the world gather at the Garden Route Trail Park where Sam Reynolds and co had built some of the biggest jumps in the world. Imagine rolling in from a 70ft tower and hitting a jump at around 80km/h and you have an idea of how these guys are pushing the limits.
I really need to take this opportunity to thank Pieter Badenhorst of Photo Hire. He gave me the warmest and most encouraging welcome when I arrived in Cape Town and has gone out of his way to let me experiment with the Broncolor lights he distributes. The original plan was to shoot with two Broncolor Siros 800w lights however they weren’t available on the day, so instead he let me take the Broncolor Move 1200w pack with Air Sync so I could shoot at faster speeds. I’m usually a two lights kind of guy so it was refreshing figuring out how best to use one head. I’m still trying to get my head around the Hi-Sync physics but after a while I started to figure what works and what doesn’t.
Below is the result. Not my finest work but a great lesson and experience. Shout out to Ryan Franklin and the rest of the crew for putting on such a great event.
  
