5 months of sport, crammed into 2 minutes.

For the past five or six summers, I've travelled the country chasing athletes around shooting the Contact Triathlon Series for Triathlon New Zealand. It takes me to some great spots and the challenge is keeping the work fresh and coming up with something new every event. Thankfully it's a pretty photogenic sport. I've crammed a bunch of moments from the latest series held over the 2010/11 summer into a two minute video. Check it.

Kris Gemmell - pro athlete

I spent a few days last week up at the Snow Farm near Wanaka shooting a project with olympic triathlete Kris Gemmell. It was a bunch of fun and I'll hopefully head back there next month to finish things off. I'm also shooting a video which will need a few months of production but keep an eye out - I'll be sure to post it here when it's finished.

The setting for last weeks shoot was breath taking - quite literally. At 1600 meters above sea level the air is thinner than at sea level which is enough to make breathing a bit tougher than usual - like chasing a speeding triathlete. We were interupted during a 7am session in minus 4 degree temps so Kris could be interviewed on radio and even he was out of breath. More proofs from the shoot here.

Keep'n it real

It's about time I showed the blog some love after a busy few months. This week we finished production on a spot for Contact Energy to promote the Contact Triathlon Series. Produced with/for Zephyr WPD and Rainger Connect. We shot this sucker in Wellington, Tauranga and Rotorua on the Canon 7d at 50 frames-per-second so we could peg the action back to a gentle slow-motion. The brief was for a raw/photo-journalistic feel, fly-on-the-wall stuff and the triathletes we used were actual, real-life triathletes. When you want real, nothing beats reality.

Contact Tri Series promo from Mike Heydon on Vimeo.

Lazy day at the beach

For the past four summers, I've travelled the country shooting the Contact Triathlon Series for Triathlon New Zealand. It's a great brief to shoot - fantastic locations [Whangamata, Wanaka, Kinloch...] and Triathlon is a really photogenic event. Here's the second round of this year's series from Whangamata: