In the big Venn diagram of interests, the intersection between mountain biking and photography seems to be a considerable one, which is probably why photo weekends run by top MTB lenschap Seb Rogers (with a little help from BM) have been consistently popular. A healthy number of people keen to improve their bike photography have done the course, and The Quantocks-based weekends have been running since 2007 (here‘s a little story from the first one) and have usually been oversubscribed. But amazingly there are actually spaces available on the next one in October.

The format of the weekend is straightforward. We all meet up at a very agreeable B&B in Bicknoller at the foot of the Quantocks, get a brief introductory chat from Seb and then head out to take pictures and hone techniques. This is where BM’s Mike Davis comes in, scotching rumours that he’s actually just a reasonably convincing text-based simulation that only exists on the internet by showing up in real life and even referring to himself in the first person for a change. And, more importantly, riding the same stretch of trail over and over again so you get to practise your shooting skills.

At the end of each day we return to base to look at, dissect and constructively discuss the day’s take over mugs of tea and all the home-made cake you can eat. That’s not a claim we make lightly, by the way, but experience thus far has shown it to be true. And then it’s off to the nearby pub for fine local ales, decent grub and usually some highly entertaining banter.

Don’t worry if you’re a complete photography novice, either – we’ve had people who’ve owned an SLR for less than a week, or people who’ve had one for ages but never had it set to anything other than full auto, and by Sunday afternoon they’re all happily tweaking exposures, checking histograms and turning out some cracking shots.

You can get a good idea of what it’s all about from various blog postings made by previous attendees, and there’re plenty of photo galleries from previous weekends too.

Tempted? Of course you are. Head over to Seb’s blog at sebrogers.typepad.com for more details…