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it has been a while, i wouldn't mind some input on this.

cheers

My first thought was "looks like he's walking that bike in the air. Clever"
Then I noticed the shadows. Esp down the left sides of the boy & bike. Yep it's a cut & paste job and not that well done. You need to get the lighting consistent. to be believable for more than a moment.

I still like the sky though. Quite dramatic.

do you mean actual cut and paste job, or bad lighting?

it hasn't been cut and pasted, it just had a little bit of raw teasing with sharpening for print.

also my own crit was that i felt the light was a bit hot on his hands and face, but i guess thats par for the course when you are trying to make black stand out against a night sky. i didnt mind the black edges as its just from motion blur (he is wearing black and his bike is black) as i had to push the exposure to get the sky in (i really like the sky).

nevertheless thanks for your crit.

To me it looks like the biker was put there, mabe because of the sharpening ?

The biker looks like he's been put there to me too. It LOOKS like a poor cut & paste job. I'll take your word that its not, but I feel you need to get the elements of the picture to fit together better for it to read as a genuine photo.

The motion blur reads like a background on the original bike & biker on a black background. Maybe you need to lose it for the photo to appear genuine. I don't know. As I said in my first post, my first reaction was "Wow", but when I looked closer, it seemed to be faked. It is that perception you need to address, regardless of the reality.

Very cool capture of the moment, however I agree with the other comments re the rider looking fake.

IMO part of the problem is that you have too much flash and/or too many light sources.

I think there's so much light on the rider that they don't look natural - there are no shadows (on or cast by the rider) or subtleties in the lighting on him which make him seem like part of the rest of the scene.

Maybe you can add some motion blur to the black shadow only to make it stand out somewhat ...Might help with getting rid of the cut and paste look

The effect others are describing - isn’t that the result of flash firing on a slowish shutter speed? You get that black blur from the movement of the bike and rider during the slow exposure and then the flash freezes the movement either at the start of the exposure or the end depending whether the flash is on first or second curtain sync.

The thing I don't like in the photo is the person near top left crouching?

Probably as they are severly blown out by the flash and distract from the rider in the air.

I don't take it as fake looking, but the light on the rider is very harsh.... can you soften that with some PP?