Not only does he not look like he’s pooing himself he’s looking down the trail to where he’s going next. The git.

image from here http://www.pinkbike.com/news/picture-of-the-month-april-2014.html btw

Is he on a 2 stroke? Or has the photoshoping gone too far?

flash behind him through the dust cloud at a guess and looking at the way he’s backlit?

I rather like the cycling in a minefield shot.

More ambulance fodder from facebook:

i’d like to see the next 10 frames

He’d be dead if he was on a 26er.
(There goes another kitten)

It was real 🙂

http://m.pinkbike.com/news/myth-buster-matt-hunter-video-2014.html

It doesn’t look nearly as impressive on video, because you can see it’s really a wall ride rather than a berm/corner!

(still pretty good mind 😉

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOlVJv7jAHg#t=29[/video]

on a 29er ffs

Well, that’s me told, blimey

My photoshop comment wasn’t far off, not in what he was actually doing, but they have just made the picture look completely unnatural.

I think I could get away with going around that with my head at the same angle as he does, not sure where the hell the bike would be….

cynicism mode: pros can make any bike look good, that berm looks very groomed for the event, and I expect the dirt he puts his bars into was the fluffiest muffin brown pow possible.

still, props.

I don’t like these obviously staged shots, with backlighting etc.
He’s probably had to keep riding that same corner what, 10-15 times to get that shot…
It’s not like he’s on his way to work, on the ring road.

Full respect to him.
If I tried that it would be like when a bison goes down on the plains.
A big dust cloud as a desperate lame beast proudly trying to stay upright.

HDR and too much flash has ruined photography.

The shot looks copypasta, although we know it isn’t.

What’s the point? Zing / pop everyone looks at it because it looks unreal on almost every level, but is it satisfying? #2 photo kills it IMHO.

Except it’s not actually HDR tho is it, the dynamic range is quite normal.

It’s just hypersync where the shutter speed is high to freeze motion and knock the ambient back and still sync the flash above the the normal 160/250th. No HDR as the blacks are 0,0,0 RGB or close to it.

There is a whole bunch of processing going on there. Compare it to the video. Ok it isn’t the usual crazy all-grey HDR, but it is still quite processed looking. And the whole overdone flash thing looks crap for MTB photography IMVHO – it makes that picture look like a studio shot with a totally different background pasted in. Artificial and jarring, but then I guess that is exciting to a certain demographic.

I like it. For me they’ve underexposed the ambient a little too much though.

Definitely not HDR IMO. Would be tricky for an action shot anyway surely? I guess you could put the camera on a tripod and make a HDR background shot then take one with the rider in and add it. Not sure why you’d bother though.

The comments are a little different on STW than pinkbike, I think the main reason for this is… wait, is that an Emily Batty piece…?!

who is emily batty?

I think the video is better.

Wall ride or not, scraping knuckles and forearm in the dirt like that would make Dutch a happy boy on his rides!!

If you have 14 stops of dynamic range to play with from a modern sensor then it’s just a lift of the shadows and a pull down in the highlights (if they are not blown) the flash (camera right) is going to lift the shadows and freeze the action. No Fancy tone mapping, no double exposure.

I guess you could put the camera on a tripod and make a HDR background shot then take one with the rider in and add it. Not sure why you’d bother though.

It could well be a composite image using an HDR background/foreground and a wider aperture, faster shutter action shot with multiple flashes to capture a crisp, bright moving subject…

It looks like there’s a flash hidden out of view highlighting the dust trail behind, but it doesn’t seem to be casting much shadow across the trail or illuminating anything else, and something is illuminating him from high up in front and again not casting much additional shadow, but then there’s quite a bit of foreground shadow, and the sky had been made quite blue and darkened a fair bit too to suggest it’s been shot in the early evening perhaps?

Looking at some of grasses in the foreground there’s a couple of blades that could be the same item in two positions brought in from either exposure, but its hard to tell especially at the picture’s resolution.

In fact from viewing the video its quite clear the natural light on the day was almost nothing like that picture shows it to be…

See Hazy background sky and a high sun casting lots of shadow and the straw like grass has gotten magically greener…

The reason for doing this much processing of an image is simply to make the image more striking and make the subject stand out more from the background, but it does make it seem quite unnatural and serves to make it a bit unclear as to what time of day it was actually taken, humans have quite an instinct for when stuff just doesn’t look quite right, sometimes a light touch is better….

I much prefer image #3 on that PB article a big old blown out corner, Now that looks proper Rad!

Personally I far prefer that video capture, but hey I’m not in marketing.

who is emily batty?

😯

http://www.redbull.com/en/bike/episodes/1331585861958/mtb-chronicles-mini-emily-batty-profile

In fact from viewing the video its quite clear the natural light on the day was almost nothing like that picture shows it to be…

In fact from viewing the video its quite clear the natural light on the day was almost nothing like that picture shows it to be…

Yeah but you can do that simply by underexposing the ambient light. On a bright day you can need pretty powerful flashes to overpower the ambient though.

t looks like there’s a flash hidden out of view highlighting the dust trail behind, but it doesn’t seem to be casting much shadow across the trail or illuminating anything else, and something is illuminating him from high up in front and again not casting much additional shadow

There’s a flash behind him and another to the right of the shot.

Um, not exactly a photography geek here, but the video capture shows the image in the afternoon sun, the one used in the advert was obviously taken at dusk, hence the bluer sky, shadowed (not greener) foliage, and he’s even taken his front wagon wheel off, because the qr isn’t quite re-tightened on the still/evening shot!

It’s like a really expensive game of spot the difference!

Um, not exactly a photography geek here, but the video capture shows the image in the afternoon sun, the one used in the advert was obviously taken at dusk

Not necessarily, for the reason’s I outlined above. If you’ve got enough flash power you can make blazing midday sun look pretty dusk-like. It’s a very common trick in action sports photography.

In fact from viewing the video its quite clear the natural light on the day was almost nothing like that picture shows it to be…

no shit! sherlock. 😯

Yeah but you can do that simply by underexposing the ambient light. On a bright day you can need pretty powerful flashes to overpower the ambient though.

this:

but the video capture shows the image in the afternoon sun, the one used in the advert was obviously taken at dusk

as grim says it isn’t. a fast flash sync speed drops the ambient (darker sky) and using a hyper sync trigger enables you to do this and you need a slower duration flash and to match the peak output to the exposure window of the high shutter speed, you lose power this way but a more powerful flash deals with that. the high sync speed means you also lose the blurred edges from the long ambient exposure/flash mixing.

in short he knew what he was doing, knew the shot he wanted and used the right equipment in the right way

The lad on the bike’s not doing bad either

Not impressed. I often make this manouvere between forgetting to unclip and hitting the floor.