Another photographer I will be looking at for inspiration for my images and photo story is Sven Martin, a world renowned mountain bike photographer. I have chosen to look at his work due to how well he capture the emotion of the riders both in action as well as after the races/ trails as well as the emotions of the people watching. Showing emotion within your images is important when telling a story through them as not only does it portray the feeling of the event but also helps build a connection with the viewer.
The first image that really caught my attention was a photo of a mountain biker coming down a trail, off of a big steep rock. You see the crowd watching him and Martin has 'shot through' a man changing a tyre and has framed the mountain biker in that wheel. The image was taken with a extremely wide, fisheye lens which you can tell because of the distortion in the trees. This allows Martin to shoot extremely close to the track and still capture the full scene, and in this case to shoot through the other rider changing the tyre in the minimal space he would have had to shoot this. Due to being such a wide angle lens most of the image is sharp, Martin has exposed this scene for the shadows which allows him to capture all the detail of what's going on as as being a forest a lot of the course will be in the shade. He has used the natural light coming in from the sun to light the scene. Despite exposing for the shadows the image still has lots of contrast and dark parts of the image, like the trees against the sky and the bottom of the wheel being changed against the mud. The tones in the image are very harmonious with lots of greens and browns making the image look natural and raw. I like that in the background you can see the crowd all hyped up and filming, the inclusion of this in the image adds to the connection the viewer gets with the event and puts the viewer right there with the rest of the crowd.
The next image I looked at is a close up, detailed portrait of one of the riders taken in natural light, it was shot with a telephoto lens wide open. By shooting like this Martin has caused the background to go completely out of focus which gets rid of a lot of unnecessary detail and makes sure your eye is only on the rider. He has framed the image super tight in showing only the front of the riders face, which is positioned to the left of the frame looking out to the right. You can see mud splatter on the visor, and the mans face. I like the amount of detail that is in this image and I like the story the mud splatter tells the viewer. Martin has exposed this for the skin which has made the helmet go nice and dark adding lots of contrast between the skin as well as the 'background'. The image has lots of blue and pink tones which go together well to create an interesting feel to the image. I think portraits, and detailed shots are important in telling a story through photographs as it shows the viewer details you may not have even seen if you were there, this gives the viewer a unique and interesting experience when viewing the photos.
Next I chose to look at an image that I think shows a range of emotion both in the rider and the crowd. The image is framed in two parts, on the left of the frame you see a crowd of people filming and watching. You see a tree that splits the frame just off from the centre on the left, with the rider jumping off of a huge rock on the right, you can not see where he is going to land. I like that you can see a difference in feeling across the image, the crowd all watch how he does it and look almost nervous for him which contrasts the aggressive, focussed emotion you get from the riders body position. The image is lit using natural light just as the rest were, it was shot with a large aperture and id say was shot on the 70mm end of a 70-200. I think this because of the compression and field of view. The tones in the image are nice and soft however the dark brown adds a nice amount of contrast against the lighter greens in the scene. In the background of the image you see the crowd and supporters and I like how this shows the viewer that this isn't just any old mountain biker. It provides context to the race and helps tell the story better.
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