The grueling road to have your photograph voted Picture of the Year. BY MYLES MCCUTCHEON
The best action photos always contain a mix of factors that allow for them to stand apart from the rest. Lighting, composition and timing are all important, but experience, patience, hard work and even luck play more important roles in determining how great a photograph ends up being. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the world of extreme-sports photography, where a cloudy day or simple missed grab can ruin an otherwise perfect image.
Last week marked the end of Pinkbike.com’s annual Photo of the Year competition. Over a million mountain bike photographs taken by shooters around the globe are uploaded to the site each year, and users nominate 3,000 for showcase in the contest. Judges whittle that number to a final 32 images, which are then pitted against each other in a reader-voted bracket to determine the POY. It’s an epic showcase of the immense amount of great pictures taken each year. Below are the top eight photographs from this year’s competition, along with an interview with POY winner and B.C. native Sterling Lorence.
Rider: Thomas Vanderham
Photo: Sterling Lorence
www.sterlinglorence.com
Sportsnet: Tell us about yourself in 100 words or less.
Sterling Lorence: I’m a Vancouver-based professional photographer who specializes in action sports and documentary photography. I was raised here on Vancouver’s North Shore and was influenced heavily by the outdoor life in the mountains and on the ocean. Mountain biking became my sport and it quickly inspired me to become a photographer. I was so inspired by where bikes could take me. The hub of mountain biking on the globe is B.C. and I was lucky to be a photographer here at the right time.
SN: How did you come up with this shot?
SL: I have worked with rider Thomas Vanderham for many years and he is considered one of the top freeriders in the world. He is always coming up with really dynamic and incredible ways to ride a mountain bike. We have often collaborated on trying to create progressive images that showcase his riding and unite that with an attempt at progressive photography, whether that be with compositions, lighting or natural landscapes. For this image, it was all in the dust roost you can get in the summer in Kamloops when the trails get this dry. It doesn’t take much to get a complete smoke trail behind you, and when both tires get loose in a berm corner like this the dust explodes. We shot a bunch of takes in the natural light and it looked awesome, but you could see in the shots that some strobed lighting could take it to another level. So we dragged the heavy kits down the trail and created this image. We were both totally jaw-dropped looking into the camera’s display after just the first take.
SN: Despite the great action the photo does rely heavily on lighting. This is typically not the way mountain biking is captured. Are you seeing more of this come into shooting the sport, and where do you see it all leading?
SL: The nature of mountain biking takes you far away from the car and studio, so generally it is tough to do heavy-lighting projects. Further, bikes do take us to such incredible places in the mountains and telling the story by finding the most inspiring uses of natural light is often preferred. That being said, digital photography is evolving so quickly that experimenting with all the amazing products that can alter looks in cool ways is happening more and more. With so much of mountain biking now happening in bike parks, local dirt-jump trails and car shuttle-able mountains, I do feel you will see continued progression in advanced lighting techniques simply based on ease of access.
SN: Photographing actions sports is not all fun and games. How long does it typically take you to get a killer image like this?
SL: For an image like this one, I have often collaborated with the rider, such as Thomas, on what types of images we have done and what we have been recently inspired by. I think it is important to know your industry—know what people want and what is still fresh and original. So there is often a day or two before the shoot where we try and have a focused approach to where we will go and what we are trying to do. We always build in a day or two for location scouting and riding to be able to see lots of terrain and maybe be inspired by something that fits our goal. Like in this image from the Kamloops Bike Ranch, we were looking for an area on the trails where I could shoot him doing a two-wheel drift through a corner. This location working perfectly for him and the dust factor with my lighting were the bonus elements that we scored. If it had rained the day before… this shot doesn’t happen. So it is about a three-day process to achieve with the actual photoshoot process taking a good five to six hours, and that’s mostly spent lugging gear.
SN: I love learning what gear people shoot with. Care to share your go-to rigs with us?
SL: I use a Canon 1D Mark 4 as my camera body as it has a better flash-sync capability than other Canons and I used a 70–200mm lens. I use pocket wizards to sync the camera to my off-camera strobes. There is a combination of Elinchrome and Profoto lights firing in this image. I have a set of Dakine photo backpacks that help get the gear in place and shelter the electronics from dust or rain storms. No matter what I try everything goes home dusty and suffers as a result, but it is worth it when you see how people react to the images, especially a super-stoked rider.
SN: What is your dream assignment?
SL: The dream assignments are the documentary-style travel features that I do for magazines where we get to have our bikes take us to faraway countries and discover incredible cultures that have insanely rad single-track riding in jaw-dropping mountain ranges.
Rider: Wade Simmons
Photo: Reuben Krabbe
www.ReubenKrabbe.com
Rider: Cam Zink
Photo: Christophe Laue
www.christophlaue.com
Riders: Bryan Regnier and Maxime Mauvis
Photo: Stef Cande
www.stefcande.com
Rider: Brendan Howey
Photo: Mike Zinger
www.mikezinger.tumblr.com
Rider: Brett Tipple
Photo: Margus Riga
www.margusriga.com
Rider: Tanner Stephens
Photo: Dave Trumpore
www.davetrumporephoto.com
Riders: Matt Mclay and Pete Cornes
Photo: Laurence Crossman-Emms
www.laurence-ce.com
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