Behind the Shot: Mountain Bike Selfie

Mountain biking is one of my favourite hobbies and I wanted to challenge myself to create an interesting image in my “backyard” of British Columbia.  I love being behind the camera, but always thought it would be cool to have a good mountain biking photo of myself.  I decided to take on this challenge, and create a custom remote system that was integrated into my bike, so that I could trigger a camera and a flash whilst I was riding the bike. After experimenting with a bunch of different switches from my local hardware store, I settled on a pushbutton …

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Behind the Shot: Night Racing at Le Mans

The Le Mans 24 Hours is without a doubt, one of the most incredible sporting events in the world. Every summer over a quarter of a million people descend on Circuit De La Sarthe in Le Mans, France, for the greatest motor race on the planet. National Geographic even called it the #1 event on the planet! The cars and drivers battle for a continuous 24 hour period around a race track that is partly made up of local roads, and partly a modernized F1-style facility. From a photographic standpoint the race delivers many challenges because of its length, and …

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Behind the Shot: Le Mans Nighttime Panning

Motorsports at the Le Mans 24 Hours has come up before in the Behind the Shot series because it presents a great man challenges to any photographer. This time we’re looking at a typical panning shot, where a very slow shutter speed is used, combined with a panning motion of the camera. When you pan with the car and keep it in exactly the same place in the frame, the car stays sharp whilst everything else around it becomes blurred.  This is done to create a sense of speed, and the 1/30 of a second shutter speed for this shot …

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