It was early in the morning of the NORBA National Championship Series finals and I was already on track to get some downhill practice photos before I had to shoot finals later in the day. Then, if time allowed, sneak in a DH practice run for myself. You can tell it’s early morning, because the sun had recently risen and is hitting the trees directly from the side creating the long, dark shadows covering the entire track.

Being this was Sunday, I’d already walked and shot entire course a few times since that Thursday. Practice hadn’t yet begun, so no riders were on course. I shuffled my insufficiently caffeinated self a few hundred yards down the wet, morning dew-covered race course in pursuit of the first shot location I had in mind. As I walked with my back to the course I suddenly heard what sounded like a rider in the distance. Then, I realized it wasn’t just any rider, rather a very distinct sound and it was quickly approaching: the one-of-a-kind Honda RN01 gearbox-driven downhill bike. I stopped in place and thought, “Minnaar.”

The year prior (2003), Greg had just won his first world championship aboard an Intense-built Haro downhill bike with Manitou suspension. (He now has four world championships, three World Cup overall titles, and 22 elite World Cup Downhill wins—most all time.) Minnaar then made the switch to ride for Honda’s newly formed G-Cross downhill mountain bike race program (2003-2006) that featured the one-of-a-kind gearbox box bike that not only looked insane and was never produced, it claimed to have near-infinite gear ratios (well, for that first year’s bike, anyway).

(Bike Nerd Alert: If my memory is correct, the Honda G-Cross program existed from 2003 to 2006, but only this very first year did the RN01 bike have the internal transmission with engaging clutch-style plates to deliver wide-ranging gear ratios [and a very unique sound when coasting]. After 2003, the proprietary Honda RN01 DH bikes looked aesthetically the same, yet inside the gearbox transmission they basically had two standard-ish looking and criss-crossing derailleur-type devices and cassette inside a “gearbox” to provide the wide-ranging gear ratios. As memory serves, this was a significantly lighter-weight system, and also required a lot less maintenance. I’m sure if any of this is wrong I’ll be informed in the comments. Moving on…)

As I hurried to get off to the side of the track, everything from this point must’ve happened in fractions of a second. Realizing the reigning world champion was charging toward me on the most unique bike in the history of downhill racing, I realized I needed to get a shot because there was no guarantee I’d get a good shot of him in the finals, and he was about to win the overall NORBA National Series title (hence the #1 on his plate). This might be the last time I saw him go by at the last US national race of the year.

When I looked back up the mountain toward where he was coming from, all I saw was a bright blue sky juxtaposed by completely dark brown and black race course. I could hear Minnaar’s gearbox-driven bike making it’s unique whizzing and whining sounds as it moved toward me while I stood blindly beneath him on the backside of a large step-down jump. I was still a long way from the location I intended to start shooting from, so I hadn’t unpacked my flashes (I almost always shot with off-camera flash for about a decade) and wasn’t yet in position or prepared to shoot anything. I remember thinking that if I expose for the bright blue sky I’ll have a black blob of a rider on a dark brown and shadowy hillside, which wouldn’t be any good. But, I noticed the sliver of light poking through the trees on the backside of step-down jump I was standing beneath. So, if I exposed for the sky and could frame Greg jumping through the horizontal ray of sunlight maybe that would work. It did. This photo ran as a full page in the December, 2004, issue of Mountain Bike Action magazine.

On an icy High Sierra Mountain-morning this past March, Field & Stream magazine editor, Sage Marshall, and I joined Autumn for a day of fly fishing. And, as he put its in this article:

“Harry, who is Numu, or Paiute, on her father’s side and Diné, or Navajo, on her mother’s, knows the lake well. I wanted to fish with her because I believed she would help me catch my first Lahontan cutthroat trout (LCT) and because I wanted to know more about her connection to the lake as a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe—a group that has fished here since time immemorial.”

Pyramid Lake is about an hour outside of where I live in Reno; however I’d never been there. Once I knew I was going to be shooting this project, I drove out there a couple of times prior to the shoot day to see what the terrain was like and how the sun moved over the far mountains and across the landscape. From November until April, the Reno and Lake Tahoe areas have been pummeled with record snowfall, relentless rain, and seemingly never-ending cloudy and lousy weather. However, not this morning. The only day of that week which wasn’t forecast to be completely overcast was the day the magazine had scheduled the shoot. Shooting without a cloud in the sky happens, especially when it’s to shoot an event or a commercial project where I’m not in charge of scheduling. And, since I like shooting into the sun I’ve become adept at using trees, branches, people, and other objects to keep the sun from blaring directly into my lens. However, not today. The lakefront area was largely rock formations and there was nowhere to hide from the piercing sun. As the yellow orb of life rose over the mountains in the distance it created some very cool, ethereal-looking scenery, yet when the solar rays bounced off of the water it was like staring directly into a nuclear reactor through a magnifying glass. Yet, we made it work. Besides, it’s been a couple of months since I shot these photos, so I’ve started to grow accustomed to the patch over my right eye and skin grafts covering my entire face…

The first time I ever heard of fishing at Pyramid Lake was in a New York Times story about how fishermen there fished from ladders, which I found odd. Evidently, it’s because maybe 50 yards from the short there’s a steep shelf that drops off and the lake become extremely deep (maybe my distance estimation is way off). Fishermen use the ladders to stay up out of the water as far out as they can and cast into the deeper, cooler water, before they encounter the shelf and sudden drop off into the lake’s dark, swirling underbelly, or something like that. Turns out, there were some ladder fisherman out the day of our project, as well.

Upon arriving at Pyramid Lake around 5 a.m., Autumn generously provided me with waders and wading boots, neither of which I’d ever worn before. Since the sun was rising in the distance in front of her and Sage, I figured I’d shoot from the for the backlit images I was looking for until around 9 a.m., then, once the sun was higher I’d enter the water to position the anglers where I preferred them to be in relation to the sun as it rose and the day grew longer.

Sage’s piece focuses on how Autumn is changing the way people understand and appreciate one of North America’s greatest trout fisheries. As a fly on the wall shooting the photos for his story, my eyes were widened to the water usage rights her tribe has been battling the US government over for decades.

For context, below I’ve pasted a short excerpt from Sage’s story, which can be read in full here.

“I’d met Harry at the lake early that morning. After a short drive down a rough dirt road, I found her rigging up at her old white Chevy Silverado. She’s nearly 6 feet tall and is wearing a silver nose ring, a beanie, a puffy jacket, and Patagonia waders.

“We could still see the stars, and the headlamps of anglers stretched in a line along the shore’s dark rock outcroppings. It’s mid-March, prime time for the lake’s fly-fishing season. In warmer months, the trout dive deep, but when it’s cold, they’re within range of shore anglers.

“…The lake is so beautiful,” Harry says. “Paiute people like me have a direct connection to it. I often think about how my ancestors endured so much so that we can be here. My appreciation grows when I think about the history.”

“All these fish belong to the lake…” “We belong to the lake. We’re just taking care of the fish. As long as we keep that up front, we’re going to be OK.”

Camera Equipment

For this project, I used my standard photo gear package, and a few select lenses:

– Canon R3 body

– Canon 1DX Mark III body

– Canon 70-200 f2.8 ISIII USM lens

– Canon 16-35 f.28 III USM lens

– Canon 24-70mm f2.8 II USM lens

– Canon 50 mm f1.4 USM lens

– Canon EF to RF adapter

– Omega reflector

– Polar Pro lens filters

– F-Stop Loka camera bag (12 yrs old, discontinued I think)

Racing the track myself that day, I felt this location could be an interesting spot during finals. Aaron is screaming out of a right-hand corner then floating over a pretty big step-down jump and is basically about to land in a sharp, high-speed, right-hand berm, which is where his eyes are looking.

In the bottom right of the photo you can barely see the top of the berm. I’m on my stomach propping my camera up over the berm with my elbows, & then used a bungee cord to strap Canon Speedlite flashes to a tree. My goal was to expose for him with artificial light, then control the ambient light with shutter speed in high-speed sync mode. Based on the motion blur in the tires, I’d guess this was probably shot around 1/500th to 1/640th of a second. I couldn’t really see him approaching & also couldn’t hold myself up on my elbows for too many consecutive riders while holding a 70-200 lens. So, I listened to the crowd get louder as he approached then peeked over the berm to hopefully catch up in my viewfinder at the right time.

Presumably, not many people reading this have worked for a monthly print magazine, so here’s how it went down where I worked. In my full-time print magazine days (which ended in 2011), for every issue I’d have ~10 days to research and write any stories I was on the hook for that month (for many years it was about half of the entire mag). Those 10-days also included any travel to shoot an event, attend product launches, etc. At the end of that 10-day period all of the written stories were due. Next, I’d have 5 days to shoot all of the images I’d need to illustrate the articles I’d written, like new products in the studio, bike test action, and also curate any images from events, destination stories, or personality pieces to illustrate those stories. Often, I’d shoot a bike test in the morning and then ride for one in the afternoon. I’ve certainly done too many bike test shoots to keep track of, however I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve ridden in more as the model than I have done as the photographer. Well, that was probably true until about 2015, anyway.

Five days after all of the photos were turned in and processed, my two editorial colleagues and I would proofread the mag and send it off to the printer. Then, 10 days later my stories were again due…

This cycle continued month after month year after year. By the time an issue came out in print, I was likely writing and shooting one three issues later, so I rarely paid attention to that issue that just hit the newsstand, because it was old news to and I’d moved on months prior.

Therefore, I never really paid attention to how the publisher brightened this entire image for the cover, but when side by side to the original it’s evident.