Originally posted by cb750r Thanks, I find the riding a lot easier to ride the trail than to try and capture the motion and scale of what we're riding with out making it look flat or confusing to the eye.
The challenge is that it IS flat. A-line is built on an 8% average grade. To make these shots more interesting you need to incorporate an environmental perspective (i.e. an interesting scenery shot that happens to have a mountain biker in it) or find an angle. The problem is that on these trails they are busy enough that if you get in a good position for a shot you might get run over - for example that wall ride photo on the Golden Triangle Trail has some interesting angles to photograph from but you have to stand in the way of other oncoming riders to get most of those shots.
I lived at Whistler for years - very few excellent shots come out of the bike park because it is so difficult to photograph. The shots in the adverts (mostly Sterling Laurence photos) are on trails that have been shut down for the photo shoot and sometimes on features closed to the public. Of course Sterling is a magician with his camera so that helps too.