Team pursuit, world cup classics, Manchester, 20 February

1/4th @f16, lens 70mm, ISO 200

This was taken during the team pursuit qualifying that lasted for over an hour with the individual teams competing against the clock one at a time. This meant I had plenty of time to experiment with slow shutter speeds and lighting. I ended up combining the effects of flash-blur and reverse panning. Normally, to get a feeling of speed, I would set a slow shutter speed and follow the cyclists as they made their way round the track. However I worked out that if I was to pan in the opposite direction to the cyclists using a slow shutter speed and simultaneously trigger a remote flash inside the track, then I could freeze the rider in silhouette and blur the scenery. After quite a bit of playing around with different exposure settings, I settled on this and then just had to get my timing right