Last week we took the family to a bike park that had a number of obstacles, berm-jumps, and ramps for people to try out their skills. In the world of terrain parks, this one is at the beginner level. My goal was to see what I could capture of the bikers because the movements are fast and 
expressions rather focused (from experience, the moment I look away from the upcoming obstacle or trail in front of me is the moment something jumps up and grabs you!) So forgoing the person in the scene and rather focusing on the action seemed appropriate. With a fast shutter, ample light, and a skilled subject this is not too difficult to master and catching someone in mid-flight will produce a nice dramatic image. For this shot I went with a low-angle and used the sky to isolate the subject from the background as a way to draw attention to the action…but the images I was taking lacked a certain “artistic” look…something that combined action with style or somehow brought out a different look. Frustrated, I gave the camera to Susanna (my wife) to “go-crazy” and jumped on my bike to go play in the park (it was killing me to try it out!)
For me, if I look through the photos in our collection, I know which ones she took and which ones I took…each has our thumbprints on them (har..har) meaning our style comes out…it’s like I am happy if the instrument is tuned and she wants it to make great music. The art, of course, is the ability to combine both of these. It wasn’t until I got home and looked at the images and sort of slumped a bit when I saw what Susanna had taken.
For this particular image, the exposure was set to the clear blue sky and the addition of the direct sunlight and biker created this silhouetted-look with the punch of the bright sunlight. Far more stylistic, forgoing of things like balancing the histogram!
There is a lot to learn (obviously!) about combining my love for the technical side of imagery with the stylistic side of combining a variety elements within a scene to bring forth a mood. Still searching for that “eye” for pulling all of this together…
Tags: adventure, colorado, mountain biking, photography, red rock canyon, shadows, specialized