Behind the Lens - Dan Milner

You won't meet many mountain bike photographers with stamps in their passport quite like Dan Milner. With adventures that regularly take him to far-flung and often dangerous locations, Dan's appetite for the trail less traveled has delivered some of the most memorable 'adventure' photos we've seen in mountain biking. Having worked with some of the sports greats—who can forget his hilarious video with Fabien Barel—Dan's work has ultimately been defined by the environments he thrives in and an unwavering passion for photography and riding bikes. We caught up with Dan just before embarking upon another epic trip into the back and beyond, this time, trail hunting in Patagonia with Matt Hunter. Just another day in the office for Dan Milner…

---

Let's get things started. Can you tell us about yourself and how you got into bikes?

I grew up in Woburn Sands, England. The infamous dirt jumps came long after I left home, but that was where I first rode off-road. We put cow-horn handlebars and cyclocross tires on our racers at the end of the 70s—like a UK klunker scene without the inhaling. We knew nothing about California, Ritchey, and Fisher and inhaling. Then I went to University in Wales and got my first mountain bike in 1985—a Raleigh Maverick ATB 15. In the UK it was called an All-Terrain-Bicycle then. It broke a lot.

How and when did you get into photography?

Photography grabbed me properly when I traveled in South and Central America in 1989. I sympathized with the revolutionary politics going on in places like Chile and Nicaragua. I ended up shooting riots with an Olympus OM-1 through clouds of tear-gas. I had no idea then that I’d later make a career out of photography.

Are you self-taught or did you study photography?

I’m self-taught, apart from an evening class in Black and White darkroom techniques. It seemed stupid not to learn to develop my 35mm films and print my own images. I put together my own darkroom and read all about Ansel Adams’ developing and printing techniques—proper geeky stuff like split contrast printing, adding decayed ‘old brown’ developer to affect how a negative develops its tonal range and so on. Like I say, geeky.

At what point did you realize that this could be a job and how did your career path develop?

It’s been a winding path. I freelanced features to mags like MBUK [Mountain Biking UK magazine] around 1993. I’d book a last minute package holiday to somewhere cheap like Mallorca, Spain, and turn up at the check-in counter with my bike alongside fat holidaymakers. Then I took off to Argentina and Chile for a year (as you do) on a Kona Cinder Cone in 1996, panniers and all, and threw myself at photography when I got back. I went to Chamonix, France for the winter to properly ‘launch my career’ in snowboard photography. I shot winters while working the summers in the bike industry in Bristol in between for the next three years. The days of 35mm film were an expensive learning process.

I became the senior photographer at a UK snowboard mag and started shooting stories in places like Alaska, Russia, and Greenland for magazines like Transworld and Snowboarder. I avoided shooting a lot of mountain biking then as riding bikes was my escape from ’work’ but then I landed Bike Magazine’s Photo of the Year in 2003 from a small submission and thought I’d better take the bike stuff more seriously too. I shot a lot of the Jeremy Jones Deeper trilogy snowboard trips but I’m done with shitting myself in the backcountry, and now bikes make up most of my work. Bikes were always my real passion so what’s there not to like? I still ride without a camera a lot, though—that’s important to me.

What was the sport like when you first started shooting mountain bikes?

By today’s standards, the bikes were primitive, but the freedom of having a bike you could ride anywhere was mind bending. Mountain biking, like the early days of snowboarding, was almost a subculture thing, but from the tech side, it was kind of like today—the industry was going in any direction it wanted, inventing new stuff every couple of months and to hell if it worked with anything else. It was all about lightweight (and anodized purple) and about XC racing in fluoro lycra on rigid bikes with Flexstems. I raced the 5-day Transalp on forks with 35mm of elastomer travel in 1992 and did a little story on the race for a now defunct UK mag. My stories were mostly rubbish pics of me track-standing on my bike (shot using the self-timer), but they were original enough to pay for my bike holidays.

You’ve shot some of the sports greats, but who sticks in your mind?

Having Hans Rey on my 2013 Argentina trip was a dream come true: he was a hero of mine since the late 80’s and shares my sarcastic sense of humor. Matt Hunter just teamed up with me again for a big trip to Chile, along with Rene Wildhaber. They’re pretty much the epitome of perfect adventure trip riders—taking the rough with the smooth and never complaining about doing ‘just one more shot’. Not everyone wants to come on my sort of adventure trips and I don’t necessarily look for “big named” athletes for trips, but like to find the right person for each trip according to and depending on the challenges we’ll face. For example, our recent trip to Lebanon, only 50 miles from the Syrian border, needed riders who would keep it together and stay positive whatever happened. Tibor Simai and Kamil Tatarkovic filled the role on that one. They both rule on the bike too.

Away from mountain biking, what else do you shoot and what would you like to?

Mountain biking is my ticket to travel but shooting bike trips can be too focused on the riding, so I add more time to see more of the people and culture so to understand a place better. I shot a big photo essay on elephant-based tourism (see it on my website) on my way to shoot the Yeti Tribe Nepal gathering. I like shooting portraits too. It annoys me to see ‘travel photography’ portraits shot with a 200mm lens from the other end of the street—you know the image of an old leather-faced Nepalese woman sitting with a prayer wheel etc. Anyone can secretly snipe a shot of someone from 200 yards away. I’d rather try to talk to the person, make a connection and then shoot them with a 50mm.

What’s been your most memorable trip (and why)?

The 3-week trip to Afghanistan in 2013 with Matt Hunter and Anthill Films is the most memorable, but maybe for some of the wrong reasons. It was a full-blown tough-as-hell expedition. It was immensely rewarding, and we knew that at the time, but we were so immersed in the mental and physical demands of the trip—crossing 5000m passes, clawing through blizzards, wading through rivers, camping in -10C temperatures—that I think the realization of what we were doing only sank in afterwards. Some trips are like that. It presented so many rich photo opportunities, though, and the photography helps me find a purpose sometimes when my sanity is asking WTF we are doing here.

Is there a photo you’ve taken that you’re particularly fond of?

Picking one is hard: photographers have so much emotion attached to their photos. The viewer only sees the sum of the parts and judges the photo from its aesthetic alone—of course, that’s the photo’s job. You don’t see all the work that went in to get the shot. I like the way there are more ‘behind the scenes’ features nowadays, to highlight why we get emotionally attached to our images. I guess I have to choose, then this bike shot as we were about to begin to climb a 4900 m pass in Afghanistan, with my bike, a horse, and two nomadic shepherds helping out. Otherwise on a purely personal level, then it’s this riot photo in London, the UK in 1991, with the South African embassy on fire. These protests brought down Prime Minister Thatcher.

What or who has inspired you over the years?

Street photography is a big lure for me—I to try to capture the seemingly absurd in daily life, so reportage photographer Martin Parr is my photo hero. How I shot my Nepal elephant photo essay was influenced by Parr’s photography. I draw inspiration from the natural world and from classic landscape photographers like Ansel Adams, wildlife photographer Nick Brandt and old street photographers like Doisneau. It can be anything, but I like photos that make you think, rather than just admire from an aesthetic point of view. I’m a sucker for the World Press Photo exhibition. You subconsciously extract so many influences from seeing exhibitions like that.

What do you think makes a good shot?

It’s easy to make a head-turning photo by adding an Instagram filter and that serves a purpose for 15 seconds of fame. But the elements of a really good shot—exposure and composition—have to be decided when you press the shutter, not afterward on the computer. For example, deciding to shoot a black and white photo means “seeing” the scene in B&W; that will affect the composition and choice of what elements to include. A good shot should tell a story through context or through timing to capture the moment.

Let's talk about gear. What would you take with you on standard riding shoot?

Commercial shoots mean my heavyweight (and older but reliable) Nikon D3s and 2.8 lenses but packing for adventure trips so you can ride properly is an art. I shot most of the last couple of years on a Nikon D750, Zeiss 18mm f3.5, 50mm f1.4 and 70-200mm f4. I’ve used my Leica M9 rangefinder for a lot of past remote trips—to the punter’s eye, it looks like a piece of junk so it’s discrete and great for street photography, but it is very limited for bike work. I just got a Fuji X-Pro2 to take over the bike trip duties from the Leica M. I use F-Stop photo packs, like the Guru, Kashmir or Tilopa, taking whichever size is best for the job.

What advice would you give an aspiring photographer looking to break into mountain bike media?

Surely there has never been an easier time to build a name right? I’m an old cynic so I never jumped on the whole social media train, but I can see how it’s key to building a name. I’ve seen newer photographers land big shoots in short amounts of time because of their online presence and being showcased in places like here, on Pinkbike. I’d say go and shoot with some decent riding mates in some golden light, or in bad weather to capture the true gritty story of mountain biking and push that work out online. Study other photographers’ images, don’t just look at them, and don’t recreate them, but use them for inspiration. The fundamentals of good photography still apply—composition, exposure, and telling a story. Digital lets you get away with a lot but hidden underneath an Instagram filter a crap photo is still a crap photo. Damn, I am cynical, aren’t I?

Having seen how mountain biking and photography has developed over the years, where do you see it going in the future?

Smartphones mean everyone is now ‘a photographer’, but I think that has added to, not detracted from, photography as a whole by fuelling interest in photography (though people do need to re-learn to just watch, absorb and live in a moment rather than having to photograph and film everything just so they can post it on their social media later, WTF). Luckily the pro photographer’s work still stands out for so many reasons. The ease of digital means the photo marketplace is a bit more squeezed, something that’s not helped by the media being in turmoil. Marketing budgets are being spread so thinly across such a vast print and online platform now and every mag seems to shout ‘exclusive' in their photo contracts, but don’t pay enough for the story to cover the airfare just to go shoot it. Where do they think this original material comes from? Ultimately it means less original content for everyone, which is not healthy for anyone. We seem good at creating these situations and then later, wondering why we f**ked things up.

It’s interesting to see the rise in quality coffee table print mags, though. There’s been a dichotomy between cheaper, short attention span online output, and the emergence of new, quality-repro coffee-table mag. But with more long-form online features appearing even that’s changing.

It’s a bewildering but exciting time in mountain biking and photography—there are so many new developments happening that make our ride better and photography easier, the two almost parallel each other. But where is it all going? Who knows! And finally, big thanks to Yeti Cycles, Fox, Shimano and Madison, Mavic, Giro, WTB, Silverfish and Mountain Equipment who keep me rolling out there and shooting my adventures. I’m not done yet.

---

www.danmilner.com
www.instagram.com/danmilnerphoto

---

MENTIONS: @yeticycles / @foxracingshox / @shimano / @mavic / @GiroSportDesign / @wilderness-trail-bikes / @Silverfish-UK

---

Past Photographer Interviews:

---

Posted In:
Interviews Behind The Lens Dan Milner