I don’t play photographer much any more at races. Every once in a while I’ll step in as the understudy on the MTB World Cup circuit to fill a need and shoot stills but for the most part I concentrate on video. That’s not to stay I’m unfamiliar with how the photography game works, so it was fun to don a red vest at the Jingle Cross World Cup and get back into the still life.

Jingle Cross on a nice day is a pain in the butt to get around for media. If you want to get that shot of the field coming up Mt Krumpit, there’s no way you can shoot the chaos of the start. There’s not enough time to travel between the start and the top of the hill.

Add in the extra challenge of running around a venue that has turned into a mud-induced skating rink, and travelling from shot to shot with speed becomes an acrobatic exercise.

But we all have our secret maps in our head on how we want to get around, and everyone does the best they can to fulfill their clients’ needs and create images that you can look at later while editing and say, “yeah, that one worked.”

The challenge of it all is not to forget that you have to get the easy, cookie-cutter shots in the bag before you start getting creative. Every photographer in the scrum knows how to shoot a race and get the standard looks we know are going to fulfill client needs. But once that’s done, you can start taking some risks. Start playing with angles, light, framing and all the other basics of photography that have been knocked into your brain over the years.

And then once you do that, the game is to break those rules. Sometimes it works to magnificent results. Most of the time it looks like it’s the first time you’ve picked up a camera.

With that preamble behind us, here’s my gallery. Magnificent result or first time with a camera? That’s for you to decide. For captions, the game for me was to write the first thing that popped into my head. As for sequencing, the men raced first and I just imported these photos sequentially. So scroll down if you want to get to the women’s race. Off we go …