June month’s Photo Critic photography competition goes to Ewald Sadie for his image “Fairytale Descend”. This image wins him a free one (1) day workshop.
Photographers Comments:
I take a lot of downhill mountain bike photos and I’m pretty comfortable with my setup and I’ve got a good idea beforehand of what I want to achieve on the day. After a simple scout along the track to locate a couple of potential shots, I compose my shot based on the light (sun) and background, and of course the rider’s position (body language) in that spot. In this case I wanted to capture the rider descending down the epic green valley, and dramatic cloud formation. Facing towards the riders (turning around) would have given me a much less dramatic shot so I decided to shoot towards their backs as they pass me – this also kept the shot more anonymous and just shows a DH rider on his way down the hill. This meant shooting into the sun, which is always tricky, but with the remote flash providing the fill it came out pretty nice.If I had a do-over, I would have used my 2nd speedlite to add more fill to the right side of the rider, as this is a bit too dark to my liking. Probably using the flash on 1/8 power to not blow out the subject, but just provide subtle fill.
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