Photographing a Cycling Race from a Motorbike

Last month, another edition of the world’s most famous cycling race, the Tour de France, took place. And as in previous years, I didn’t participate either as a rider or as a spectator. I don’t have enough strength for the former (and it gets worse every year) or enough free time for the latter. However, I’m not throwing in the towel and I hope that one day I’ll be lucky enough to be part of the peloton – well, as a photographer, at least.

It wouldn’t be the first time. I made my debut at a pretty important cycling event – the 2013 European Road Championships. I was asked by the father of the famous photographer of this sport, Markéta Navrátilová, if I would cover this championship from the seat of a motorbike. As a cycling fan, I couldn’t refuse.

When you’re a spectator at an event like this, you wait in one place for hours just to see a peloton of cyclists rushing by as a colorful swarm. That never really appealed to me. But to see everything like on TV – to be able to almost touch the cyclists and to have the opportunity to photograph them – that’s something completely different.

I should point out that not only did I have zero experience in photographing sports – I also had zero experience in riding a motorbike. But what the heck, everything is a first, and one should try everything. Besides, someone else will be handling the bike. And as for my experience, the group of cyclists does resemble a flock of colorful birds on their way to their nesting grounds. In that sense, I had plenty of practical training.

In fact, unlike birds, cyclists move in a much slower and more predictable direction. And to make things even easier, the motorbike is moving at a similar speed, so photographing cyclists from its saddle would have to be a relatively static affair. At least, that’s what I thought before I sat down behind the driver with my camera.

As it often happens, the reality was somewhat different. If you’ve ever watched a cycling race on TV, let’s say the Tour de France, you’ve probably had a similar (delusional) impression to mine. Through the lens of a stabilized camera moving at the same speed as the peloton, the cyclists appear to be moving quite slowly. Don’t be fooled! The riders are going crazy fast.

Maybe not up a steep hill, but as soon as the road swung the other way, I was shocked. On razor-thin tires, the bikes flew down the hill, well, almost like falcons. We had a hard time keeping up with the cyclists on the bikes on one of those twisty downhill sections. With barely ten kilometers to the finish, the battle for position was raging. We were speeding down the road at almost 80 kilometers per hour, leaning into the corners as if we were in a Grand Prix.

I had to trust my driver completely. Or to put it another way, in the heat of the moment, I was unaware of the potential dangers. At one point, the bike skidded a little on the front wheel and then on the rear wheel. I had my bag over my shoulder and had just turned around to try to photograph the rider coming up behind us. We almost went off the road in a roll with the bike. That was close! From that point on, I clung to the bike like a tick until the end of the descent, trying to regain my lost confidence.

As soon as the road flattened out, so did my view of the peloton as a calm train of cyclists moving through the countryside. How naive I was! The peloton is more like a boiling cauldron, ready to explode at any moment. The riders are constantly battling for position, communicating with each other all the while. There is no shortage of shoves and minor or major collisions.

Shooting the junior category was particularly dramatic. With the pros, I felt more experience, discretion, and effort not to get hurt. After all, it’s their body that feeds them – it needs to cross the finish line, if not first, then at least more or less unharmed. The juniors aren’t as aware of this and get into fights much more recklessly. The biologist in me remembers why there is a slightly higher birth rate of boys compared to girls.

During one of the descents, I witnessed an accident in which a number of young racers went off the road. At that point, they could have been going 70 kilometers per hour, maybe more. After a small collision in the peloton, they flew off the road like rag dolls. At the time, it had been two years since I had lost my mom in a cycling accident. That’s why the sight of young, bleeding, obviously suffering or even motionless riders really freaked me out. No, I couldn’t photograph that. After checking to see if I could be of any help, I continued my work as a photographer. I later learned that, miraculously, no one was seriously injured.

And what lesson have I learned photographically? Perhaps the most important was that less is more. Photographing from a motorbike is a bit like a classic western scene where the rider on horseback is fleeing a horde of pursuers and returning fire. Shooting backwards over your shoulder (whether with a camera or a gun) is not only uncomfortable, but also dangerous. The photographer is often off the motorbike’s center of gravity, which can easily lead to a fall. So it makes sense not to make the situation worse by carrying a bag full of lenses and flashes, as I did.

If I were doing the same job today, I would reduce my photographic equipment to two lenses. I would have a 14-30mm on one body and, perhaps surprisingly, a 28-400mm on the other. This is because changing lenses on the fly is both risky and awkward. In terms of camera choice, the relatively compact Nikon Z8 is an ideal option for these purposes. After much consideration, I would either leave the flash and remote release at home, or put them in the motorcycle’s storage compartment.

Of course, my lens choices would be very different for shooting in the finish area. A lens like the 400mm f/2.8 on one camera and the 24-70mm f/2.8 on the other would probably be my favorites. I would use the telephoto lens to capture the sprinters’ duels at the finish line, and the standard zoom to capture the exhausted, sweaty faces behind the scenes. Well, each job requires slightly different tools, but these would be my general choices.

This job had one more peculiarity. It was probably the last time I photographed in JPEG format. I knew there would be no time to edit the photos. A quick crop in the Nikon ViewNX viewer and that was it. In sports, it’s all about speed on both sides of the camera. Today, however, I’d shoot in RAW. Faster memory cards, readers, USB-C interfaces, and computer speeds would allow me to shoot in a much more flexible format without a significant time penalty.

What can I add in conclusion? These days we are moving towards more and more specialization. This is true for almost all disciplines and crafts, and photography is no exception. Even sports photography is partly atomized into sub-disciplines. Some people only shoot rock climbing and mountaineering, some are specialized on athletics, and some only photograph cycling.

Still, it is very refreshing and inspiring when you can stick your nose out of your comfort zone and learn something new. You never know when it will come in handy. That said, I doubt that my wildlife photography will ever replicate the experience of shooting backwards from a motorbike. I tried shooting from horseback years ago, and believe me, it’s a dead end.