Graham Watson: Breaking Away
One of the more remarkable, unremarked breakaways of the 1977 Tour de France was initiated not by a relentless pack of attacking cyclists but by a motivated single photographer, Graham Watson. Until 1977, Watson was a classically trained portrait photographer who’d learned the basics of composition, lighting, exposure, film, and print in the studio of London society photographer Lenare, when a seemingly simple change in his daily commute triggered a radical career shift.
“I’d just taken up cycling, riding into and out of London because I couldn’t afford the train fare”, says Watson. “Just by chance I discovered the Tour de France bike race in the summer of 1977. I was 23 years old, old enough to know that I really wanted to do something else, not portraiture, not work in a studio. I realised I was pretty good at photography and OK as a cyclist, so why not combine the two passions?”
The breakaway was on. Shortly after seeing his first Tour, Watson won a photo competition organised by “Cycling Weekly” magazine, which helped get him regular work photographing races around the UK and occasional work covering races in Europe.
Joining his two passions, photography and cycling, Graham Watson covers the pro racing circuit 180 days a year.
Steep Ascent
During those early years, Watson quite literally combined photography with cycling, once pedalling over 125 miles in a single day to cover the 1980 Paris-Roubaix race. But by the mid-’80s, Watson’s list of clients had grown to include magazines all over the world; he had worked his way into the first tier of international cycling photographers, with full race access. Today he covers the racing circuit 180 days a year — from January (Australia) to October (Italy) — with impossibly well-composed shots that manage to wrap into nearly every frame both the passion of the racers and the beauty of the racing venues.
Watson’s best images travel more widely than even Watson himself, finding their way into the publications and Web sites of clients such as the International Cycling Union (the sport’s governing body), top cycling magazines and many leading cycling teams, as well as into Watson’s own Web site, where his fans enjoy same-day picture coverage.
Chasing the Tour
But the event that inspires Watson’s greatest yearly effort — and arguably his greatest images — is the same event that launched him as a cycling photographer. “The Tour de France for me is almost not a bike race”, he says. “It’s just that much bigger than everything else”.
In 1987, to better address the scale of the race, Watson once again significantly altered his work commute. “I’m on a motorbike now every day of the Tour”, he says. “When I first began in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, I was literally riding my bicycle around France, but my list of clients eventually got me Tour accreditation. It opens up a world that to most people doesn’t exist”.
The motorbike, piloted by one of two regular drivers, gives Watson the ability either to follow or to overtake the pack, shooting with two different cameras and five different lenses to bring the closed world of the Tour to the insatiable world of Tour watchers.
Watson is matter-of-fact about his ability to find and make classically balanced action shots while circumnavigating a pack of moving subjects. “Experience is everything for me”, he says. “I usually know what’s going to happen before it happens. Not as literally as that — you get it wrong sometimes. But you read the race, and if they’re going into the mountains, or if it’s raining, you anticipate that and plan your photography around it”.
Watson also starts each day with a wish list. “If a stage is in a beautiful area of France, then obviously the beauty is as important to anybody as the action”, he says. “But people who follow the Tour de France want everything. They want the beauty, the action, the crashes, the drama, the excitement, the glory, the sadness — everything”.
To the delight of his clients and fans, Watson has more than delivered while covering 25 consecutive Tours. Asked about particularly memorable Tour action, Watson cites Lance Armstrong’s efforts in 2003, when the cyclist crashed twice but got up to attack and win the stage and the race. “Lance was easy”, he remembers. “He was the number-one man, so naturally you followed him. You’re not there all the time, but you’re there most of the time”.
