Richard McGibbon Photography

May

2014

Highlining Australia: Project Pulpit

A large highlining project recently took place in the Blue Mountains near Sydney. It was an attempt to set and walk Australia’s longest and highest highline. The line came in at around 70m long and at its highest point was about 220m high. As is normal for the Blue Mountains the line took place in spectacular surroundings.

By the end of the weekend the line was walked but not all in one go so unfortunately the line remains classed as unfinished. I’m sure another attempt will be made on it soon and hopefully then we will see some closure.

Below is a selection of images from the weekend.

May

2014

Dynamic Dumbells

Last week I did a shoot with Stephen from Dynamic Dumbells. He is a fitness trainer specialising in personal and group training sessions. Stephen wanted shots of himself balanced upon the edge of somewhere. The shots will be used on his website. He will also be using a shot in a caption this competition to raise money for a children’s hospital.

Below is a small sample of the images we got.

May

2014

Kayaking around Ku-ring-gai

Yesterday I went out for a bit of a play around shooting a couple of friends as they explored a few of the bays around Pittwater in Sydney’s North. I have a few trips coming up that will involve kayaking so I wanted to give things a bit of a test run and try to get some ideas for angles and such.

: Kayaking on the Hawksbury.

: Kayaking on the Hawksbury.

: Kayaking on the Hawksbury.

: Kayaking on the Hawksbury.

: Kayaking on the Hawksbury.

: Kayaking on the Hawksbury.

: Kayaking on the Hawksbury.

: Kayaking on the Hawksbury.

: Kayaking on the Hawksbury.

: Kayaking on the Hawksbury.

: Kayaking on the Hawksbury.

: Kayaking on the Hawksbury.

Apr

2014

Rollercoaster and Downhill State Champs 2014

A damp weekend greeted riders for last weekend’s Rollercoaster and Downhill State Championships at Thredbo. With the mountain bike season drawing to a close for the winter down at Thredbo the decision was made to run the races in the rain anyway. Including the training runs on the Friday the event runs over three consecutive days. Gil and I arrived early on Saturday morning and missed what was proclaimed as a very wet and soggy training session on Friday. Many bike were still hosting a fine decoration of mud though come Saturday morning.

On Saturday the training runs for both the Rollercoaster and the Downhill continued through the morning. The first section of the Rollercoaster track needed to be closed due to an excess of mud and water, it was ankle deep in places. In the afternoon the Rollercoaster got underway. By then the rain had eased a bit. We started shooting at the top then made our way slowly down. Gil covering many of the tight switchbacks on the tracks and me shooting more out in the open. Since we were shooting more for fun we had a good play around with angles and panning shots. Not good if you want to read competitors numbers but fun for us anyways.

After heavy rain overnight all that remained was a couple of low lying clouds which burnt of quickly leaving Sunday to the blue skies. A few training runs in the morning and then straight into the downhill in the afternoon. Both Gil and I shot around the top section of mud and rock gardens. I found myself a great little spot and barely moved for the entire race.

It was the usual dominant faces that took the podiums minus the exceptions that are away for the world cup races at the moment. South Africa was held on the Saturday night while we were down there.

The full gallery of images can be found here on the OuterImage website.

Apr

2014

Cam’s Jam 2014

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being invited to Cam’s Hillside Dirt Jam. This is BMX dirt jumping at its finest, with some of the best riders around.

Cam White has built up a bunch of big dirt jumps on his land. These are amongst the biggest, if not the biggest, in Australia. Every year, he hosts an invitation-only event, bringing some of the best riders Australia has and a few from overseas. This year, the big overseas name was Mike Hucker Clark, who, prior to the event, took it upon himself to capture a very irate tiger snake (crazy American).

Wind delayed the day’s events, and for a while, it looked like they might have to be postponed, but it dropped off in the afternoon, and things got underway. First through the set was Danny Campbell, but it wasn’t long before others followed suit, and soon, straight airs progressed into some of the wildest tricks I have seen on bikes before. Not being too good with trick names, I’m afraid I can’t tell you even a quarter of what they were doing.

Fuel TV was there to film the events and had their own photographers, so my presence was purely to watch and hang out. I found a nice spot to sit and relax and fired off a few shots while watching the day’s events unfold. Festivities continued late into the night.

A big thanks has to go to Born To Ride Freestyle for setting things up for me. If you like your BMX, swing by his page and check it out.

Below is the highlights gallery and the preview for the Fuel Tv show.

Apr

2014

Greenvalleys and X-up Promo

This weekend just past I went down to Greenvalleys Mountain Bike Park to shoot a few promotional shots and check the course out for the upcoming Xup Australia’s Freeride Festival. The guys from Red Bull brought their cool dj machine down and the fellows from Grip Industries swung by but rain got the better of the day and heavy downpours made everything a washout. By the time the rain had stopped, it was pretty much too muddy and slippery to do any riding. The best I could do was send the guys through a puddle. Such is the way of outdoor shoots, they are all weather-dependent.