Look again.
Back with another outside look at cycling, in collaboration with Mental Athletic.
What is Heat Check? It’s not a race report – it’s something different. It’s the perspective of someone with zero stakes, zero preconceived notions, zero expectations, but no shortage of experience making images.
There’s no introduction, no crash course in cycling photographer etiquette – we’re extending an invitation to the sport’s inner workings. All access, no brief. Why? Because shifting the frame on something we think we know gives us a new perspective. In part one of three, Italian photographer Alberto Cantu went to Omloop Nieuwsblad, spending a day cold and wet at the first of the Belgian Cobbled Classics.
In part two, we’re joined by Matthias Leidinger, a fashion photographer from Vienna, Austria, for two days at the biggest bike race in the world. If you watch any bike race, it’s the Tour. Even non-fans know the Tour. Only the World Cup trumps it for viewers worldwide, with billions tuning in around the world. But there’s always new eyes, and new ways to look at something you think you thought you knew.
They say the tour is a circus, so roll up for two days at the Tour de France and Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.
ONE OF THE MORE BEAUTIFUL BRIEFS…
Of course there were some directions and hints of what we could do, but the main brief really was to kind of capture the intensity of the moment. Basically a creative carte blanche.
It’s called Heat Check. That summarised the two stages I shot pretty well 'cause it was incredibly hot. I was just trying to get as close as possible, show the sweat, pouring water bottles over their head, this intensity in their faces.
WHAT’S IN A MOMENT?
When I shoot in the studio, I love having my models talk off-camera, asking what they had for breakfast or whatever, just to capture that moment either where they think about what they're gonna say or where they're just opening their mouth to say something. Where they're not doing the actual thing they're gonna be doing – the 0.5 seconds before that. You're hinting at what happens after, which is the magic of the medium of photography. You have this one frame and everything that happened before and after is left up to your imagination.
DO YOU COME HERE OFTEN?
I watched the Netflix documentary about it (the Tour de France) two years ago, and I really loved it. But also, it's quite narrative in how they pick up the characters. So, as interesting as it is, it's not so much about the actual cycling as it is about the narrative and the people on the sidelines. So it was a very interesting learning experience.
It’s pretty crazy to see and to understand the size of the spectacle that you're a part of… I think around 500,000 people were on the mountain on that day [FranceTV reported as many as 600,000 spectators on the Alpe].
The second day [Matthias shot one day at the Tour de France on Alpe d’Huez, and then again at the final stage of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift in Nice] was super different, an earlier morning as well, on the side of the road in one of the feed zones with people from the team. Feeling the intensity there, how they got more tense just before the actual peloton approached, was a different perspective.
INSTA VS REALITY
The waiting itself was a really interesting part that I didn't really see coming. I had this very intense scenario in mind all the time. The reality of these races, or at least of the Tour de France stages that I saw, is that you're at one spot for hours. You just have a lot of people waiting, but also still being really in the moment. That was also really beautiful to photograph – a lot of the fans there were super offline for the most part. There were very few people just sitting on their phones on the sidelines.
I was mostly with the physios [at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift], seeing how they were trying to catch the athletes' attention with the bottles and the gels. I could crouch behind them, and I knew I was getting the riders picked out because they had to dive out. Even though it's a super small moment, handing over the bottle, it felt really important. I didn't realise prior to seeing this sport in person how much of it is about nutrition. The whole thing is basically also just a competition to see who can eat and drink the most.
… AND IT LETS YOU GO OFF SCRIPT
And of course, sometimes, the nicest images jump out at you that you didn't think of before, and then you kind of divert from your plan. For the most part, it's really important to have a very exact idea of what you want to do. And throughout the day, you look back at the images that you took already, or at least I do, to understand, okay, I like this about that image and this about that. And then you kind of try and work away from there.
PREP MAKES THE MAGIC HAPPEN
On fashion or on commercial projects, usually you start off with a very detailed brief, and very exact deliverables. Once you understand the brief, you start thinking about how you wanna set your light, you talk to your team, you go really, really in detail and think about how you want every single aspect of the image to be. It's a lot of pre-production: talking to everybody involved. Hair and makeup, styling, set design, and just understanding everybody's perspective on it and bringing them together and bridging them. Then on the day, I feel like the shooting part on these commercial fashion projects is the least intense part for me.
… AND IT LETS YOU GO OFF SCRIPT
And of course, sometimes, the nicest images jump out at you that you didn't think of before, and then you kind of divert from your plan. For the most part, it's really important to have a very exact idea of what you want to do. And throughout the day, you look back at the images that you took already, or at least I do, to understand, okay, I like this about that image and this about that. And then you kind of try and work away from there.
AFTER ALL THAT, WOULD HE DO IT AGAIN?
I kind of didn't really grasp the privilege of it before I went there, but then, you know, just sitting in the car and seeing all the fans outside, going crazy. Just understanding how much this matters to them was so special. I'm super grateful for the opportunity to jump right in there, and I would love to experience it again because the energy on the day was so amazing.
With special thanks to:
Photographer: Matthias Leidinger
@matthiasleidinger
Words: Stuart Downie
@circlestu
Collaborators:
Mental Athletic
@mental.athletic
GreenEDGE Cycling
@greenedgecycling
