Marius Maasewerd

Judges' Feedback

Good, slow pans can be tricky to shoot well. Marius not only nailed this Danny Hart at 1/40th of a second, but did so with not a whole lot of depth of field (f/2.5 is pretty shallow). Plus he was willing to commit to the motion blurred pan; some shooters are unwilling to try slowing it down because a poorly executed pan looks like crap and at the World Champs, you don't get very many chances to shoot the marquee riders. Compositionally, he's got good diagonals working to sell the shot. Danny's a little dead center, but that's a nit pick. Overall, this is a great race shot, more so for the difficulty of executing it properly.

Sebastien Lehmann

Judges' Feedback

Sebastian did a nice job here of pulling together some cool elements: motion, time and strobe work. A long exposure like this typically won't work for an action shot. But Sebastian added the element of a flash to freeze Jorn in the frame, while retaining the blur of the water and the softness of ambient lighting. Technically, Sebastian used just enough "kick" from his flash to get the job done--a lot of shooters would have overcooked the flash. Compositionally, he's got a couple nice diagonals to add a sense of movement, and he kicked the strobe at the place with the darkest background, allowing that pop of light freeze the action at just the right place to stand out well against the background. I like, too, how the blurred streak of the rider echoes the misty waterfall.

Chris Bortels

Judges' Feedback

Cool shot of Bulldog coming out of the dust at Val di Sole. It almost looks like a Hollywood movie shot. Composition's not perfect--Brook's a little too much dead center--but his body angulation and focus sell the shot, and the clearest portion of the shot--his face--is tack sharp. Not an easy shot to get. Not by a long shot. I'd count myself lucky to have something like this in my portfolio.

Roger Grütter

Judges' Feedback

Roger pretty much nailed the mood of epic riding. The trial's not particularly technical looking. There's no sick air. No tricks. Just a couple guys shredding a ridge line. In a SICK place. Compositionally, there's great balance to the shot with the ridgeline taking up just enough space near the bottom of the frame to anchor it and just enough scenery to give you a sense of remoteness mixed with that valley mist to impart a sense of scale. Additionally, he took advantage of the valley mist and backlit the riders against it, allowing them to "pop" a bit more. Total stunner.

Matt Butterworth

Judges' Feedback

Just another day at the Bike Ranch. This shot brings back memories of lazy summer afternoons boosting with your friends. The backlight dust and Kamloops in the distance, along with the cracked out whip, make this shot a keeper. The black and white treatment is a nice change from the usual Kamloops high desert blown-out look.

Grzegorz Wawryczuk

Judges' Feedback

I like the mood and feel of this shot. I can feel the day. We've all been there--the cold misty day where you shiver on the ride up and shred the ride down. This shot doesn't have sick action, but it oozes soul. Compositionally, all the elements are there: some diagonals, good use of negative space, and moody lighting.

Mike Zinger

Judges' Feedback

The black and white is the first thing that sticks out. What may have been a washed out, overcast day in color, all of a sudden comes alive with fantastic contrast against the trees. The tire tracks in the dirt draw your eye right down the line and up to the rider, who's nicely framed by the tree on the right.

Wolfgang Watzke

Judges' Feedback

This is mountain biking. An epic day riding trails with your buddy with views that make your jaw drop. The light's firing, the colors are popping and it screams get off of your computer and come and ride your bike. Now.

Adrian Marcoux

Judges' Feedback

Adrian has more talent than you can shake a stick at. He loves to work the natural light and nailed it in the springs on this one. The trail draws you into the shot, you can imagine yourself about to slide up the berm in the distance as you weave your way through the trees on what looks to be perfect hero dirt. The treatment in post almost makes the shot seem dreamlike and ethereal. If a shot makes you want to ride, then the photographer has succeeded.

Tobias

Judges' Feedback

It's a simple dirtjump shot, but the worm's eye angle and the perfectly framed rider in the blades of grass gives this shot a completely different look. The jumps seem colossal. Creativity goes a long way, and this one speaks volumes for what thinking outside of the box can do for your images.

Tyler Roemer

Judges' Feedback

When you do decide to use artificial light it's very important to understand how it works and balance it perfectly with the natural light. Tyler does a great job of that here, keeping his flash really cool in tone to match the light from the moon and the coldness of the snow. This is a technically more challenging shot, but it you understand how it works it's really fairly simple. Great execution of a great concept!

Ian Hill

Judges' Feedback

When we talk about composition we often talk about thirds, and this photo is a great example, it's literally split into three pieces vertically. The lines of the wall really help this shot, and the rider's position is great as well. Normally when most people shoot wallride photos they get down low and shoot up to make the wall look bigger, this is a different angle, and it really helps this photo to stand out.

Lars Scharl

Judges' Feedback

Back in the film days when you wanted to shoot black and white you had to change your roll of film, resulting in images that were really well thought out as B&W images from the start. All too often now though, people shoot everything in color, and then just convert to B&W to see what it looks like. This shot was perfectly imagined in B&W from the beginning, Andreu's position in the sky, the church, as well as the landing and specators all help to create wonderful dynamic looking image that turned out amazingly well.

Pierre-Luc Bouchard

Judges' Feedback

The light in this shot is amazing. A pipe is a great light modifier, and Pierre Luc has done a great job here of using the pipe to help with the lighting. And the composition really works as well, the pipe naturally creates diagonal lines that help to make this image look powerful and dynamic.

Nic Genovese

Judges' Feedback

Sometimes when you shoot into the sun the flare blows out your whole photo and makes everything look soft and blown out. Nic has cut really close to that line here with this great into the sun shot with a longer lens. Longer is relative of course, as this image was only shot with a 90mm lens, but it's still executed very well. Shot at 1/200th we can only assume that Nic used flash to help try to create separation between the rider and the background. However he did it, it works, Great job Nic!

Laurence Crossman-Emms

Judges' Feedback

It's technically challenging to shoot tight, fast action. The shooter nailed the peak of the puddle roost showing the split second curtain of mud. It's always nice to see shots that focus on the smaller details of our sport like this one!

Sam Davies

Judges' Feedback

Beautiful use of natural light, the tuck-flip is fully extended and the fall colors are firing! We really like the dark trees placed in the foreground, creating depth as if we're there watching the session. This is one of the strongest dirt jump photos we've seen.

Cole Fulton

Judges' Feedback

We thought the photog did a stellar job finding an angle which gives the rider enough separation on a dull, overcast day. Great decision to go with the B&W application making use of the blown out sky. The timing of the still couldn't have been better!

Michael Goldstein

Judges' Feedback

We see many 'roost' shots, but this one takes the cake for having the most creative angle. Having the dirt at the top of the lip in focus and the spray closer to the camera out of focus creates a beautiful layering effect. Staying low to the ground, capturing the sick scrub by the rider tied everything together.

Marc Landry

Judges' Feedback

Right off the bat, the placement of the rider through the fence caught our eye. The dirt jumps seem to be located in a pretty open area so using the fence as a foreground element adds some impact to a simple location. Having the rider face the shooter during this corkflip helped create a stronger image as well.

Matteo Ganora

Judges' Feedback

It can be dangerous getting too caught up in decorating images with too many foreground items to the point where the action is lost, but we all agreed that this is a risky shot that 'fit'. The straight lines and curved lines play off each other well.

Christoph Laue

Judges' Feedback

We've all seen lots of puddle smashing shots before, but this one was lit very well and has a nice balance of visibility to the rider and very cool displacement of the water from top to bottom.

Michael Kleber

Judges' Feedback

Simply a creative, artistic way of expressing some solid dirt jumping. The shallow focus from the picture taking camera helps build the attention to the in focus rider doing the no foot can.

Reuben Krabbe

Judges' Feedback

This wall ride in the Whistler bike park has been shot to pieces by many photographers. This is a fresh perspective using a tilt shift lens that is one of the coolest photos of this wall ride that we've seen.

Bryce Piwek

Judges' Feedback

The story telling and eye movement that the bike light trail paints across this image is what makes it cool and stoked us out. Photographers trying unique things with their cameras brings votes!

John Wellburn

Judges' Feedback

We don't need to waste your time with words for this image. Simply sit back and look in and live it.

Norbert Szász

Judges' Feedback

Ahh, the fisheye. Everyone wants one. Everyone uses one. But very few use one properly. Norbert not only used onr properly, but went the extra step of taking advantage of all the best attributes: depth of field and field of view. Compositionally, the action is just enough above center to not distort the bike too much, and the leaves in the bottom break up what would overwise be a poorly balanced negative space. The strobed dust trail adds a great framing element as well as leading the eye to the action. Technically, the lighting's a tad hot for my taste, but it's not blown out, and utilizing a second light to sandwich the rider helps create a better sense of 3 dimensional action as well as freezing the front wheel--this shot was taken at 1/200th of a second, without that second light kissing the front wheel and the rider's right foot, the front wheel'd likely have had some motion blur on it instead of that sharp edge.

Devin Schmidt

Judges' Feedback

Great shot - it has all the elements working for it: great action, great composition, great lighting. The action is stunning: how many of us wish we could be T-Mac in this shot? Compositionally, the heavy weight of the tree on the left forces the viewer to focus on where the action is. And the action is backlit against a slice of deeper shadow, making the rider pop even more. It doesn't get much better than this.

Andrew Wilz

Judges' Feedback

Shooting straight into the sun can be tricky, and shooting wide is usually the best option. Andrew Wilz takes full advantage of this using his 14mm lens to make this ridge line shot look amazing. Compositionally this photo is pretty awesome as well, the diagonal line of the ridge creates a really dynamic feel to the image, and Brian's position in the shot is bang on, as is the sun. Even the lines of flare work well here.

Marco Toniolo

Judges' Feedback

Marco killed it on this trip to Bolivia. Rene is going pretty big for a short travel bike and an open face helmet. Seeing the rider's face truly helps make this shot - not that the epic location was lacking. The fog rolling in below, lots of background and colors that are absolutely popping in the light they had to work with make this one a killer shot.

Simon Nieborak

Judges' Feedback

A lot of photographers ask me about which flashes they should get, or how to shoot with off camera flash. Those are great questions, but before you think about them you should think about composition, natural light and timing. If you don't understand those basics then artificial light will only make your bad photos light up. Lunatyk is one of many photographers today that take amazing photos without any flash at all, proving that it's really not necessary, and this shot is a great example of that.

Justin Olsen

Judges' Feedback

Shooting POV photos is pretty easy now that we have dedicated POV cameras, but it takes a little extra effort to do it properly with a full size DSLR. Justin Olson does it properly here, hanging his Canon 5DmkII on Andrew Taylor's chest to get this epic shot of Ryan Howard. Not only is the quality on this shot great, but the timing is pretty bang on as well. This is the kind of shot that takes a few attempts to get right, you have no idea what you've shot until afterwards, and these guys killed it. Great work!

What's at stake? $20,000+ in prizes!

Round of 32 - All 32 receive a pair of SPY Sunglasses (MSRP $120 each)

Round of 16 - All 16 receive two pairs of Tioga Psycho Genius tires (MSRP $200 for two pairs)

Round of 8 - All 8 receive a set of Black Race Face Atlas cranks (MSRP $339.99 each)

Round of 4 - All 4 receive a Marzocchi 66RC3 Evo Ti (MSRP $1199.00 each) and an F-stop Guru bag with ICU (MSRP $245 each)

Winner - Receives a Complete 2012 Specialized Demo (MSRP $6600) and ANY F-stop bag plus 2 ICU's plus a Dakota accessory kit (MSRP $500)



Thanks to Specialized F-Stop Gear and Spy