Selected by Ian Hylands - I think the thing I like most about this photo aside from the great composition and color is that it's a self portrait. A great many photographers struggle with a shot like this of another rider, and Brad took this one of himself...
After he rides by, a panther with gleaming yellow eyes rises the horizon and stands tall on the rotted stump, flips open his Zippo and lights up his long stemmed pipe..."Sweet POD gentlemen" he says...
This photo sums up the way I feel in my head about riding in the Pacific Northwest. It's difficult to really explain to anyone how crazy it all looks as your blasting through the green. Surfing has it's green room, but so does Pacific Northwest freeride.
I've been on pinkbike for a long time, and I've seen a lot of PODs come and go. I've got to say this is without a doubt one of my favorite shots I've ever seen.
Everything is so green and lush. It's like you stepped off the world we live in and entered some biking nirvana.
Oh wait you just live on the Wet Coast. Keep it up man.
i agree, i do love to see some sick tricks and massive air and everything, but id rarely call one of those pictures a favourite, one like this which is just straight-forward riding shot with awesome colours and background/scenery is always better in my eyes!
wow thats weird how the shadows are going up last time i checked the sun was in the sky not the ground and oh ya there is so much light behind a huge rock and an extremely green forest
Nice hit. Is this near the end of SST? Awesome effort! Im sure the time it took you to get this shot has paid off. Nice work. See you on the trails. I ride Glacier primarily. Word!
I'm not knocking the photo (I dig it), but it's set. Look at the way the shadows fall on the "background", almost as if it were a wall... I would LOVE to have that set to play around with though!
Out of interest, how'd you trigger the camera? I've been doing some self porties with a little, bar mounted trigger that I soldered up and cabled to a PW.
I use the Time Machine (www.bmumford.com/photo) with Infrared Beam trigger. Beam is placed in the path of bike/rider at the exact moment photo is to be taken. Sometimes this is not possible and beam is placed in earlier position, then delay is set on Time Machine up to 1/1000th of a second accuracy. I usually have to ride the scene anywhere from 3-20 times to get the precise focus, timing, and lighting I want. I wanted to spend a little more time on this shot but it was starting to rain and my gear was getting soaked.
6 PW's total, 1 on each of 3 flashes, one on Time Machine, one to trigger camera, one on camera to trigger flashes, on various channels for relay.