Last month at the grand prix of Trentino I was hanging around the HRC tent speaking with an old friend, David Bulmer, who is now in charge of Honda's PR. David and I met in 2007 when he was doing his ayearinmx thing looking to break into the industry. I made a portrait of him in Morgantown, WV the day before the High Point national. Then we all got blasted at the Racer X party and watched Weege kill the karaoke machine.

So while I am poaching Honda's excellent coffee, David introduces me to Austin Hoover, category marketing manager for FOX Europe. Austin and I chatted about the season so far and I shared a copy of my book with him. He was pretty enthusiastic and asked whether I would be interested in coming onto their live show from the races, the FOX 74 Show with Jeff Emig and Georgia Lindsay as hosts?

I pretty much said yes before he could even finish. FOX is one of the few brands that has been around since more or less the beginning of the sport. More than that though, FOX is a company we can see is driven by passion. And while they have grown tremendously, especially into more mainstream markets over the last 20 years, motocross continues to be at the center of what they do. Additionally they continuously improve their products and push innovation forward. This is the hallmark of all successful companies. So any opportunity to get more involved with them was a no-brainer.

Sunday morning I stepped into the portable studio FOX is bringing to selected races (Matterley Basin, Saint Jean D'Angely and again in Teutschenthal on June 23rd) to record the show.

Austin introduced me to Jeff and Georgia and we discussed a little what we'd cover during the show. I had sent Austin some photos from inside the book so we could discuss them and when the cameras were rolling and we delved into an excellent discussion about photography, particularly as it relates to motocross. Jeff and Georgia asked some tough and interesting questions and they forced me to explain why I had made certain photos and what I was communicating through them. Here are a few snippets from the show...

Jeff Emig: You have some absolutely fantastic photography in here. I am just blown away. Why did you throw the picture of the flowers in there?

Roddy MacLeod: The nice thing about photography is it’s able to illustrate and demonstrate harmony. And harmony is something that we are naturally attracted to and Jeffrey, last year, was a rider in harmony. He was so focused. His will to win was so strong it was just an unstoppable force. And that is a force of nature and why I ended up putting those two images together.

Jeff Emig: Why the cover photo with no motorcycle on it? It’s a striking photo, but why that one?

Roddy MacLeod: For me this photo actually sums up the intent of the book. Which is that every big dream, every big idea, like “I want to be a world champion”, starts with someone saying “I’m not satisfied with being just being an also-ran”.

This was just after the MXGP start in Loket. I was walking behind the gate and I saw this young man sweeping the dirt off the gate, that was his job. At one point he stops to watch the leaders come through and I thought, “Yeah, that’s it. A track worker. A guy who might not have a lot of money, might not even have a dirt bike today, but he’s looking on a world championship event and what ideas are being ignited in his mind now? Is he thinking, “Hey, I really want to do that too. I’d like to be Jeffrey Herlings or I’d like to be Tony Cairoli. For me that really inspired the idea Will To Victory. You start with an idea and then you have to go out and execute it, make it happen and push it into the minds of everybody, like Jeffrey did last year.

The best photos actually are entirely complete photos. So the background, the foreground, the subject, the intent, they all come together to create harmony that we recognize instantly with our eye. Many times we look at a photo and we love it, but we don’t know why. Talk to a photographer and they will explain why to you.

Some of the other images discussed on the show...