Oh, ‘That’ film premiere -Kendal November 19th

After shooting what I can only describe as ‘my most challenging and emotionally tough expedition to date’ I’ll be premiering my new mountain bike film Porpoise Hunter at the UK’s Kendal Mountain Film Festival’s esteemed Bike Night on Saturday November 19th. For those that can’t make Kendal, don’t worry: no doubt it will be sweeping the BAFTA stage at some point in the near future, to be subsequently released to a wider audience online, and probably cover-mounted as a DVD on the radio Times. Oh hang on..

I’ll also be appearing in a Q&A session on the Basecamp Stage at Kendal Festival on Saturday 19th, at 10:00, quizzed about last month’s adventurous and pioneering mountain bike trip to ride Lebanon’s long distance mountain trail, a hop, skip and a jump from the Syrian border. Grab a frothy cappuccino to go and come along. To whet your middle eastern appetite, here’s a taster. (A more in-depth repost will follow -watch this space).

 

A 5 month gestation: Upper Mustang goes live

Five months.

That’s how long I’ve been buzzing from our Nepal Upper Mustang bike mission last October. Trips like that one are the lifeblood of adventure photographers, the kind of thing that delivers rewards on all fronts -mental, physical and … well, spiritual (kind of). After pedalling and shooting what was probably the most demanding bike trip I’ve ever undertaken in 26 years of mountain biking, the first feature to emerge from our labours is out in print now in the USA’s Bicycling magazine, the written stuff penned by the legend that is Rob Story. It also happens that our feature represents a first for Bicycling with the inclusion of a mountain biking feature. I guess it took something epic like this to start the ball rolling eh?

If you’re sleeplessly itching to read the mag and just can’t wait, you can see an online gallery of shots from the trip here.

And if that doesn’t for some unforseable reason appease the wannado within you , then here’s a 3 minute film that Osprey packs edited together from the GoPro footage I shot during the adventure. Yes we were using their very adventure-worthy packs.

And yes, I will get round to editing a full 10 minute docu-drama of the whole trip… soon. Watch this space.

Milner in movie making shocker: The Nepal teaser

A couple of years ago in one of the regular (it seems) Q&A’s I get asked as an ‘out there’ photographer to complete for various magazines and websites, I remember saying that I couldn’t see myself dabbling in the moving image thang inspite of the (at the time) new influx of HD movie capturing SLR bodies washing, almost tsunami like through the camera market. ‘No way,‘ I said, still photography and movie shenanigans were two things I couldn’t see mixing. ‘Focus on one,’ (and see if you can make a living from that) I thought.

You too can ride descents like this, vicariously through the magic of the moving image.

Well, things have changed. Kind of.

No I havent swapped the trusty Leica M8s for a new Canon 5D mkII.. but the 3 week expedition-like bike trip in Nepal I just shot gave me the opportunity to have a play with a GoPro HD movie camera too. It just seemed like the hours of carrying our bikes up vertical mountainsides at ungodly altitudes leant themselves to capturing the experience on film and to adding a narrative to the escapade, not least to add something extra to the forthcoming show I’m doing at the Kendal Mountain Film Festival’s bike night on the 19th Nov. Yeah, I accept that the newfangled moving image has a place in capturing some things stills can’t, and puffing and panting, expletives and endless blowing dust-laden wind are just some of them.

So if you’re at all interested in my Tarantino wannabe debut project then you can see the 3 minute teaser of what will be a fuller edit from the “riding to Tibet on some very narrow, rocky and downright scary trails” adventure here. You’ll need to enter the password “Nepal” to see it.

So when I find a spare three days to continue editing and learning the ropes of yet more software (this time Final Cut Express) then I’ll see what else I can muster from the adventure footage… watch this space.. or just come to Kendal.