Almost nobody has a decent photograph of themselves riding. There is helmet camera footage no one will ever watch, there are phone shots taken by a mate who stopped in the wrong place, and there is the one corner you ride well, which is always the corner where nobody is standing.
Ride and Shoot is a shuttle day built to fix exactly that: the usual uplift, the usual trails, and a professional photographer out on the trail all day.
Why your own photos never work
A good riding photograph is not a matter of luck, it is a matter of someone being in the right place before you arrive. A photographer who rides knows where the bike will be loaded, where the light falls at three in the afternoon, and which berm actually looks like something from below rather than from above.
They also do the thing your friends will not: ask you to ride it again. That second run, with someone watching the line rather than waiting to get going, is where the image comes from, and it is usually where your riding improves for the afternoon as well.
How a Ride and Shoot day runs
It is a normal shuttle day, with the bus, the driver, the guide and the uplift, plus Jey Crunch, a professional photographer, out with the group from morning until the last run.
He moves ahead, picks his spots, and the group rides. Nobody poses. The day is not a photo shoot with some riding in it, it is a riding day with someone good at photographs in the right places.
What you take home
Everyone leaves with their best images in high definition and free of rights. Print them, put them on a wall, use them wherever you like. No watermark, no licence to buy afterwards, no gallery you have to pay to unlock.
That last point matters more than it sounds. Plenty of event photography ends with a link and a price list. Here the images are part of the day.
Two levels, because a photograph is not a reward for being fast
We run the format on two levels, one at 2 out of 4 and one at 3 out of 4. The level changes the trails, not the attention: the rider working through their first proper rock section gets photographed exactly like the one who has been doing this for fifteen years, and in practice those are often the better pictures.
And a real meal at the end
The day finishes with a proper sit-down meal rather than a sandwich in the car park. After 5,000 metres of descent that is not a detail, and it is the moment everyone goes back through the day before the images even exist.
When it comes back
Ride and Shoot is not on the calendar at the moment, but it returns next season. If you want a date, tell us: the format runs when there are enough riders for it, so saying so is what puts it back on the agenda.
In the meantime the ordinary shuttle days run all season, and the photos of those days are included too, just without a photographer dedicated to it. How a professional shuttle actually works explains what is on board, and the dates are here.
Chris
