Clockwise from top: Richard Starkie; Richard No-Surname; Tim Beresford
Taking a photo is easy. Taking a great photo is very hard. But on more than a few occasions we’ve been mightily impressed with many of the photos submitted to the Bikemagic gallery and/or sent to us for the front page. And we’re sure that plenty more of you have it in you to come up with some corking shots.
There can be few better ways of boosting some motivation than with a photo that sums up all that is great about MTBing. Be it a long windy string of singletrack, weaving between the leafless autumnal trees, or a 10ft table top to wall-ride with a couple of sick moves thrown in for style points.
So we’d like to see more of your photographs. Handily, we’ve got the Bikemagic gallery poised and ready, eager to accept your works of art. It’s really easy to use, but here’s the User Guide if you need a hand.
And by way of encouragement, we’ve got ten Bikemagic jerseys to give to the best ten photos submitted between now and, let’s say, Monday 5 March. Who decides what’s best? Well, we do, with some help from top MTB lensperson Seb Rogers. He’ll be casting his expert eye over the submissions and helping us arrive at the top ten. He’s got some help for you, too – here’s three key things to remember:
Seb’s Top Tips
- Shooting action? Get close. No, closer than that! Filling the frame with a mix of movement and sharply focussed bits of bike and rider is the best way to grab people’s attention. Crop out any wasted space around the edges for maximum impact.
- Going for the small rider / big landscape look? Pay attention to composition, just as you would with a landscape photo. Try not to split the picture in two with the horizon, and make use of the trail to lead the eye into and across the photo.
- Track the action with your camera as you take the shot, and follow through after you’ve pressed the button. ‘Panning’ with riders this way is the safest way to make sure they come out sharp – it doesn’t matter if the background’s a bit blurred.
There you go – no excuses now. We’ll have a full how-to article from Seb soon too – stay tuned for that. In the meantime, start getting your pictures in. You don’t have to put them anywhere in particular in the gallery and you don’t have to tell us that you’ve done it – from our high-tech control centre WE SEE ALL…
Happy snapping!
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