Tag Archives: bike race photography

Andy Bokanev: Photographing the Life Within Racing

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Andy Bokanev on a ride in LA. Photo by Kelly Nowels.

Lauding the Internet for breaking down the barriers between creators and their potential audience is so commonplace it’s cliche. But without that easy access to eager Instagrammers, tweeters, and bloggers, Andy Bokanev almost definitely would not have had his blazing fast rise from hobbyist photographer to professional. In the course of about a year he went from shooting local cyclocross to embedding with pro teams like Hagens Berman and Rapha Condor at major US races and working with big brands such as Specialized and Castelli. In a similar vein as his cycling photography contemporaries Emily Maye, Emiliano Granado, and Daniel Wakefield Pasley, Bokanev’s work centers as much on life around bike racing–the race prep, the mechanics, the bored hours whiled away at the crappy motel–as it does on the actual racing. I sat down with Bokanev in a loud pub in Seattle to talk about his foray into photography, his efforts to break into professional work, cycling’s attraction, his photography influences, his immigration to the US, and more.

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Emily Maye: Photographing Cycling from Behind the Scenes


Self portrait. Photo courtesy of Emily Maye.

Cycling photographer Emily Maye is on the rise. Only a year and a half after shooting her first race photos at the Tour of California, she’s been published in cycling magazines such as Bicycling and Paved and worked for major brands such as Rapha, Bontrager-Livestrong development team, Crankbrothers and more. Emily is known for her strengths as a visual storyteller. Rather than only focusing on a race’s major climb or finishing sprint, she turns her lens on the drunken fans, the anxiety-filled race prep, the harrowed mechanics, to try and capture the entire atmosphere of a professional cycling event. In this interview, Emily discuses her background in photography, her attraction to professional cycling, the parallels between ballet and bike racing, her approach to storytelling, and more.

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