Behind the Iceholes

The June 2010 issue of Bike Magazine just hit the shelves here in Canada, which means I finally get to write about what was one of the most unique and interesting shoots I did all year, back in late October ’09.  The mag sent me halfway across the continent to the tiny town of Onaway, Michigan, to cover the race preparations of the most unlikely of teams – the Cheap Shots hunting club.

If you haven’t already seen the issue yet, here’s the opening spread:

As usual there’s a ton of shots from our four day trip that didn’t make it into the finished article, so here’s a good selection of ‘em.  Not much in the way of bike-related action going on here, but hopefully something of interest, separated into a handful of “remember that time when…” type stories.

Be sure to check out the finished article, complete with all the images that aren’t shown here, either on newsstands now or online via the excellent Zinio.

So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen I give you…

The time we found lots of plastic animals in a forest

Picture the scene: a late-night flight into Traverse City, MI, followed by an early morning drive to meet Butch & the gang at the ranch in Onaway.  The roads are deserted, Chris and I aren’t sure what we’re about to get ourselves into when all of a sudden, a patch of blues, greens, pinks and yellows flashes past in the blink of an eye.

Intrigued, we span the car round to check it out, only to find the surreal scene of hundreds of fibreglass animals hanging out in the forest, a dilapidated “For Sale” sign twisting in the wind, and not a soul in sight.  We poked around for a few minutes, realised it was decidedly creepy and got the hell out of there.

The time we stopped for gas and a car-surfing deer pulled up beside us

You know you’re not in the big city any more when a truck rolls up at the gas station, freshly shot deer on the roof.  Ever the coward, I waited for the driver to head inside the store before snapping a couple of shots, while Chris marvelled at his latest purchase – an unironic “HANDS OFF MY GUNS” hat.

The time we invaded a farm supply store, set up lights and confused customers

Our first encounter with Butch was at his farm supplies store, where we’d agreed to meet to grab a couple of in-environment portraits and arrange the rest of the shoot.  When I first meet people on a job I’m always slightly self conscious of how I must appear to them – I’m sure the guy with the stupid hybrid British / Canadian accent, setting up a softbox in between the bags of animal feed must’ve gone down a storm.

The time we learned how to D.I.Y. our own bullets

The truth is, we were actually here to see Butch for two reasons.  One, of course, was to get this article in the bag, but the other was something arguably more exciting – to use his homemade trebuchet to fling the flaming Shitbike into the afterlife.  You can see how that turned out in the video posted on bikemag.com, suffice to say it didn’t end well for the medieval war machine.

After we’d destroyed his pride and joy with our ill-conceived plan, Butch invited us in for a coffee and to show us how he hand-pressed his own bullets.  Make of that what you will.

The time we hoped we wouldn’t be complicit in a man’s death

The day of the “Iceman Cometh” race upon us, we got the team together early for a quick shot at getting the article opener done and dusted.  Setting up a couple of blocks away from the event start area meant we were close enough to get there in time, but far away enough to get a nice clean background on the shot.  The shot the mag eventually chose was as simple as it gets – just a gold reflector bouncing the morning sun back into their faces, then white-balance corrected to give a cold, blue, “icy” vibe to the image.

Prior to the race, Butch (not to mention his wife) had made some comments about him not pushing too hard, taking it easy on himself, not trying to hard and forcing something bad to happen.  Although it wasn’t explicitly stated, we got it – he’s no spring chicken, and not used to this level of physical activity.

A few hours into the race, we caught up with a beleaguered and withdrawn version of the man we’d waved off earlier.  He’d already put himself through hell, and at only halfway through the race things weren’t looking so great.  There was talk of stopping, of doing his best, of quitting while he was ahead.  All good advice, but Chris and I knew our story really hung on the hero finish – the against-all-odds triumph at the end, or it’d all amount to nothing.  We exchanged a few worried glances while Butch rested, desperately suppressing the desire to say something or somehow force him into doing our bidding.

Just as things were looking hopeless, the hero of our story stood up, announced he’d see us soon and set off on the final leg of his journey.  We breathed a sigh of relief, and watched him slowly winch himself into the distance.

The time we lost our hearing for six hours

On our last day in town, we realised at the last minute that it’d be great to get a couple of more shots of the ranch in the bag, so drove back unannounced to see if we could impose one more time.  True enough to their word, the guys had recovered from their race ordeal the day before and were busy putting up a new barn.

We hung around for a while, finishing up the shots we needed, and were just about to head off when the prospect of shooting a couple of guns was brought up.  I’m game for anything, fired off a couple of rounds with the .44 and was amazed to find that without ear protection I’d managed to deafen myself in one ear – holy crap those things are loud!

After failing to hit the side of a barn, we said our goodbyes and set off for the airport, covered in gunshot residue…

Tags: Behind The Scenes, bike magazine, iceholes, iceman cometh, magazine, michigan, shoot, tearsheet, the iceholes cometh, trip

This entry was posted on Monday, May 3rd, 2010 at 1:42 am and is filed under Behind The Scenes, Professional Mountain Bike Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.