
Charlie Buchalter Karl Buchner (L) and I exposing film during the Sagebrush and Wine tour	Don Hollingshead John Bates & Danelle Laidlaw arriving at Tunnel Mountain Campground during the Ranchlands and Rockies tour	Stephen Hinde Carol Hinde cooling off during the Kick Back in the Kootenays tour

I'm Don Hollingshead and, with Dan McGuire, will video tape and photograph the Waterways and Wagon Wheels bicycle tour. When you register for Tour BC, you will receive a souvenir DVD of TourBC after the event. It usually takes a few months to produce, so be patient.

Some of the images will be taken from the back of a van, showing the cyclists in motion. We will scout out some nice backdrops and photograph cyclists as they pass by. As with the 2005 still photos, this year's will be posted on the TourBC website after the tour. The video coverage will be combined with some of the stills and presented to participants on a DVD.

Dan and I will try to capture the incredible scenery and history along the route and interview a few of the participants as well. If you take some exceptional photos during the tour, and would like to offer them to the participants, that can be arranged through the website gallery. Just send me a CD of your shots after the tour and I will credit them to you and offer them to the participants.

I started helping with TourBC as a volunteer in 1996, the inaugural tour. Danelle had me driving trucks, moving baggage, and generally being helpful.

After a couple years off, I came back in 2000 and helped again with the "Follow the Fraser" tour doing about the same sorts of duties. That year, Danelle distributed film to the volunteers and asked that they capture the tour photographically as best they could. I remember getting all the film we had shot to that point processed and printed as 4x6s in Whistler then sitting around a picnic table at the campground that night stuffing a photo album and slapping skeeters. The routine at that time was to make the album available to the participants to order reprints from.

My offer to take over the photography for 2001, Odyssey Over the Monashee, was accepted and the first photo CD of TourBC was produced for that tour. Photo CDs followed for 2002, Kick Back in the Kootenays, and 2003, Sunshine and Whales.

Danelle sent me a short DVD she had received at a bike show promoting a fund raising ride. That sparked my imagination and with the new digital video on the market, I made up my mind to include video in the 2004 Tour BC, Sagebrush and Wine. After all, cyclists move, so why continue to portray them as static objects in still photographs?

The introduction of small, affordable camcorders that produced near-broadcast quality signal combined with reasonably priced software that allows the video to be edited and finally DVD burners who's price has plummeted combined to make the whole project economically feasible. For the Sagebrush and Wine tour, I produced both a photo CD and a video DVD so riders got double coverage in 2004.

For the 2005 tour, Ranchlands and Rockies, Danelle agreed to incorporate the cost of the DVD into the tour price. Now all I have to worry about is getting great video and stills during the event and not selling the product.

So there you have a brief history of the photography evolution on Tour BC. Danelle still has the photo albums from previous tours and often makes them available to browse during the tours. She uses the CDs and DVDs at trade shows to promote TourBC.

For those interested in obtaining previous year's photo CDs and DVDs, they are all still available. Click here.