I was fortunate enough to be asked to photograph the Andrew Talansky for the “Science of Cycling” cover for this months issue of Velo magazine. Just two days before Andrew was to leave for (and win!) the Critérium du Dauphiné, we met up in my makeshift studio (or hotel conference room) near his home in Napa Valley but, unfortunately, the fancy new Cervelo S3, POC Octal Aero, Garmin head unit and Vector pedals (ya know, the whole SCIENCE part of the shoot) were all locked up on Brown Santa’s sleigh and couldn’t be had until the following Monday. Boo. So after weighing my options and talking to the team, I decided that if he brought his current bicycle and gear, I could shoot him with what he had as a reference point, then I could shoot all of the assets later that week and composite everything together.

So after Andrew had flown out, I went back to Napa, collected all the shiny new fun bits and brought them back to SF to shoot in my studio. After it was all said and done, I spent about a dozen hours stitching everything together in Photoshop and tweaking/tuning it so it all looked like an original photo and it met the needs of the creative team at Velo.

It was a lot of work for an editorial shoot but Andrew, Garmin-Sharp and the Velo crew were great to work with. I couldn’t have been happier with the final product and that they pulled the trigger on using it for the cover. They had other options on the table but decided to let me take a stab at this. So grateful and stoked it all worked out!!

And just for fun, here’s a quick Instagram video showing a fraction of the layers it took to build this image. If you check it out, be sure to give me a follow while you’re there. Thanks!