Thanks robb... it was Chris Pilling's photo that I was aspiring to. www.pinkbike.com/forum/listcomments/?threadid=246&pagenum=927 Maybe one day I'll be able to achieve an image as crisp as his... for now it's great fun just trying to get a similar result. It was alainj's Dirt Diggler pic that originally had me thinking of what might be done on Razor's Edge www.pinkbike.com/photo/10638911/#top ... When I saw Pilling's awesome work I just had to try it. I also love your slaughter house night image. My efforts at flash photography have been fairly disappointing so far.

 Cool man, the context is helpful for sure. Not trying to be a dick at all, but when I clicked on it I thought it WAS Chris's photo it is so close, until I saw the photo info. I respect recreating a photo out of inspiration and the desire to learn, might just be a good call to toss the info about your inspiration in the description, just so it avoids any unintentional misunderstandings. I am very impressed that you shot this as a self portrait, that is another level of effort to make that happen with a decent hike in there. No problems with your remote shutter firing from that distance? Cheers.

 Thanks for the heads up robb, truly appreciated. Tried this on three different nights over a week and this was my best effort to emulate Pilling's photo. To take the shot I attempted using the delay timer on my intervalometer but I think the camera (old 40D) starts hibernating after about a minute and the intervalometer can't pull it out of its slumber. So instead I resorted to taking a whole bunch of 30sec exposures continuously while walking up and riding down. Then I only kept the frames of riding down. Only having small low powered headlamps meant it was necessary to ride as slow as possible to get the headlamp lighting to balance properly with the higher powered vehicle lights. I believe I ended up using 5 of the 30 sec exposures. Hence the long star trails compared to Chris' shot. All three nights were amazing. The night this shot was taken Tracey was sessioning the slabs while I was waiting for the lighting to be right. After one of her laps a large black bear ambled across the trail. A really nice encounter that was the icing on the cake.

 Cool thanks for the info! Photography is such a great excuse to hang out in the woods, or in the case on the side of a highway! Cheers.