A full day of shooting: Tour du Mont Blanc is an ultracycling event where about 4000 riders cover 330km and more than 8300m elevation around the highest mountain in Europe.
What was good, or easy
The weather was amazing, especially in the afternoon, when some clouds made the light very changing and nice.
Also, if shooting 8hrs in the same spot requires a lot of patience, it is a wonderful exercise to perceive these changes in light, shadow and temperature. Here, I talk more about these creative challenges. However, among the events I did so far with Sportograf, this one has a weird feeling: it wasn’t really easy, due to the very long distances to cover by car and long hours, and I didn’t shoot very much due to the low number of riders (2000 pics total, a very negative record). Nonetheless, it was a very rich day about pictures: I was in beautiful places at the right time, such as the golden hours on the lake.
What was bad, or hard
I had a tech issue with an automatic barrier, but besides this, the hardest part was patience. 400 participants in such a long route were really apart from one another. So the break between them were often quite long, and the second spot took me from 2pm until 22pm – always in the same U-turn (see pictures).
Oh, wait: logistics has been the major challenge, since we had to scramble our cars to anticipate or follow riders on this very long route, and of course being the “Tour du Mont Blanc”, there is no shortcut available: we drove a lot coming back and forth through France, Italy, and Switzerland.
Any surprise, good or bad
- First, the long hours were great to explore with the drone and its different features, such as nice panoramas.
- Second, the night was magic to shoot some minimal pics such the cover one.
A few numbers of the Tour du Mont Blanc for Sportograf
- Pictures shot: about 2000.
- Final output: My personal selection is of about 25 pics, mostly by night.
- Equipment: Very standard. Olympus Em1mkII, Em1mkIII. Zuiko 12–40 f2.8, Zuiko 17 f1.2 (for the night). Dji Mini 2 drone.
Finally, the pictures!
