The Set Up

The Backcountry office is nestled in the parking lots of Park City, Utah. Blessed with the terrain we have, it made perfect sense to complete our shoot in the final days of Summer in our backyard. The first day of 3 days of shooting we started at the top of Park City Mountain Resort. We began warming up by shooting racks, accessories and apparel. Snow still in the shadows of the trails, wild flowers in bloom, light rain giving us just enough moisture to bring the best conditions we call, “hero dirt.”

Shooting here would give us the bulk of the mountain bike & apparel guides. We had the fortune of working with Will Saunders & Jack Dawe.

We were looking for more dynamic angles, off/on camera fill flashes, action from creative points of view and letting the product show up as the rock stars with the talent going big .

Our objective was to capture content to fill a mountain bike guide and mountain bike apparel guide for Competitive Cyclist (CC). Another set of objectives was to get content for Backcountry’s separate MTB moment, get epic video and photography that would be featured in our retail locations. On the CC side of this we had the ability to split our time for the different bike categories; trail, enduro, XC and electric. We also needed to capture MTB apparel for these moments as well. This included fall/cool weather, which we ended up ordering just the right amount of rain for some of this.

For Backcountry, we had more of a general moment. The biggest piece to our objective was to capture some epic photography and video on the Wasatch Crest Trail.

Additionally, We needed to capture more bike ‘beauties’ for the bike guide portion of our project. We wanted to try a couple of backdrops for the bikes when possible.

The Crest Trail had a good variety, but this vista during lunch was about perfect for this Yeti

The way we would break out the 3 days of shooting, we had a full day to shoot in Park City and capture all but the e-bike portion, that would come on the final day. It was monsoon season, so we knew we were going to get some rain, but it was welcome after a dry summer. We had gear for wet days to feature and it would be a departure from our typical sunny day safe shots.

Like other Guides, the bike guide should be technical, the standouts are the bikes. It’s what we call “bike porn.” The most clicks and likes we get are just shots of bike beauties. If we add some serious action to it, that captures attention. One of the problems we had previously, was lack of time, talent and budget to shoot dedicated lifestyle bike & apparel guides.

For the graphic treatments, we wanted to allow the photography to breathe, but also Communicate clearly what the reader is looking at. This also included adding a transparency block to meet contrasts standard minimums.

Overall hero for the CC Mountain Bike Guide

Email Hero for E-MTB