This image was months in the planning, and only hours in the realisation that it would be a lot harder to achieve what the original vision was. Driving past this spot every day and spotting the goat track down the side of the bank next to the Renouf Tennis Centre in Brooklyn, Wellington, it was begging for an unsuspecting friend to be roped into model/crash-test dummy duties. The Rodfather was the perfect victim and after a few more months of procrastination mixed with bad coordination, we were set.

A super-steep roll-in and nasty run-out into a breeze-block wall meant Rod couldn’t drop in from the top to get the optimum photogenic bike position, so he had to scramble onto his saddle halfway down the bank while I waved my readiness from 150 metres away. The sun, I’d determined from numerous passes, only shone on the line for about an hour around 2 or 3pm. Of course, we had to be somewhere else at that time but after the months of schedules not gelling, we took what we could, while we could.

I see this as a Polaroid for the bigger picture, a test case for the money shot to come, after the winter gives way to summer sun again. I see a shovel in that line’s future.