I was lucky enough to land a press-pass to this event on the premise I hand over 5 pictures at the end of the event... I did, but they weren't touched at all.
OK... jpeg, levels x 2, curves, OnOne Professional for the sky. Noise Ninja was used to clean up the sky a little bit. Apply image, gradient map on 'soft light', high pass, USM, Nik Color Efex to remove a blue colour cast :( and make it a bit more punchy. Vignette.
Also, final vignette added by adding a 3 pixel line around the picture and blurring it to bring out the centre more.
Shadow/highlight on the guy, brightness/contrast on the guy also to bring him out a bit more.
Resize, SFW, probs some other bits and peices as i kept coming back to this.
I have a b/w version that I actually preferred but im going with general concensus on this one.
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VERy rad shot, i have this an 8, love the processing and the sky and the freeze action. I dont think the vignetting was totally necessary in this case tho
It's interesting to me how close this comes to working really, really well, and how badly it suffers from missing the mark. To be more specific, you have frozen a moment of action extremely well, but there's essentially no tension in the image that underscores the power and intensity of the frozen moment.
You're close to it with the flying bits of dirt, but they don't call enough attention to themselves. The rider is anchored by his position in the frame, especially as regards the BG elements, but also by so solidly filling the center-right area of the frame. The half-hidden, second rider is no help at all. The overall image is curiously static for what should be such a dynamic situation.
Meanwhile, the processing, which I generally would like, seems to be, in this case, overpowering the image, and in particular the excessive edge-burning is working overtime to underscore the already-static ennui of the composition.
I look at this and wish the camera's POV were about 2 feet lower, maybe. That might have thrust the machine and its rider upwards more aggressively and worked in your favor.
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