Fred Murray
Photographer on a skateboard
Fred specialises in action shots of the world’s most daring skateboarders. See the best of his portfolio in Postcards from the Edge
Can you recap how you got started as a BMX photographer?
I was never very academic at school and had always ridden a BMX. I got into photographing my friends when I went to the US about 10 years ago. I went just to chill out and ride bikes for three months, and I got a camera before I went. I’d always loved BMX photos, and I ended up just figuring out how the camera worked and then reading more about it, kind of obsessively.
I took some photos of a rider called Jeff Landtiser in Portland and sent them to John Paul Rogers, who was working for a company called S&M. He decided one would work for a magazine advert, which was published internationally. Everything just went from there. I’ve never stopped taking photos since.
Does being a keen rider yourself really help with this kind of bike photography?
Definitely. As a photographer you need to know what’s going on. There are so many intricacies to every rider: you need to know the perfect time to hit the shutter release, you need to understand every technical aspect of riding – it goes on and on.
You also don’t have a lot of time to get it right. For example, if you’re shooting in the street, you might only have a few minutes before the police or security come along and you get moved on. I have just come back from Tokyo, and sometimes I had literally three or four minutes to get the shot before we got moved on or chased away. The riders are sitting there, waiting to start, and you can’t ask them to do it again. You need to get it right first time. It’s stressful, but the rush when you get the shot is awesome.
What’s the most dangerous and threatening situation you’ve ever been in when photographing BMX?
Nothing too serious. Police and security always show up at some point, and like anyone you encounter in life, they can be friendly or they can be power-hungry idiots. I’ve had my bike taken, my photos looked through, threatened with arrest and fines...
I encounter members of the public who aren’t too psyched on what we’re doing as well. Some people just don’t like seeing other people have fun, I guess. There was one time in London when I thought I was done for: a guy ran out of his house with an iron bar, swinging it at me frantically. That day I was the only one on foot, but thankfully, we all stuck together, and people grabbed various bits of camera equipment and got me out of there in time.
How did you end up working with famous stunt rider Danny MacAskill on his Epicuen riding project?
I have known Danny for a few years via some mutual friends, and I also shot photos for his previous project, Imaginate. This was a project where Danny was riding around giant toys from his childhood imagination. Epicuen was a very different project. It’s an abandoned lakeside town in Argentina, about five miles north of a city called Carhue, on the eastern shores of the Laguna Epicuen.
There’s an interesting story behind the place. It used to be quite a popular tourist destination, and it attracted a lot of visitors from Buenos Aires. Then a rare weather pattern caused damage to a local dam and a dyke, so the town soon become uninhabitable because of the rising water. The water has obviously now gone, but you’re left with all these interesting and atmospheric ruins, which proved a great background for Danny’s riding. Unlike many
“Danny warned me about an old hotel we’d been shooting from earlier, and sure enough, when I went back at night to shoot some star trails, it collapsed”
of the other places I’ve worked, we had permission to be at Epicuen, which obviously made the shoot a lot easier.
What were the big technical challenges of the Epicuen project?
What actually caught me off-guard was the terrain. I had to shoot quite long and wide to do the rocky terrain and boulders justice. The landscape was very flat, so it was hard to get a good vantage point, and there was so much rubble. The light was very hard too. It’s very bright over there, so balancing my lights with the ambient light was quite a challenge. But two Einstein 640 lights worked really well. I was using grids a lot so I could manipulate the degrees of light.
Shooting in Epicuen was great, but you had to be careful. Danny warned me about a raised section of an old hotel we’d been shooting from earlier, and sure enough, when I went back at night to shoot some star trails, it collapsed. Fortunately, I was OK.
You use prime lenses a lot. What do you like about fixed focal-length lenses for this kind of photography?
Prime lenses just feel more ‘right’. I like the subjects in my shots to pop, and obviously
that’s much easier when you can carefully control the depth of field with a fixed wide-aperture lens.
What tips do you have for readers who would like to try their hand at more adventurous bike photography?
Don’t be put off by complicated-sounding lighting gear. You can do a lot without flash. Even a set-up like the one I used in Epicuen wasn’t that expensive. It came to about £1,500. You can get triggers and flashguns on eBay for not much money at all.
Learn about light – its duration, and how you combine it with shutter speed and aperture. I tend to underexpose, and always shoot in raw. Recovering detail from a totally blown-out shot is nigh-on impossible. I mainly shoot in Manual mode, but I sometimes use Aperture Priority. I’ve never used TTL metering with my lights. Finally, you need to get out there and shoot lots!