Shadow Stand bike stand

Now you see it……usually you don’t

do you know how hard it is to photograph something clear!?

In this age of social media, selfies and inspirational pictures on the internet everyone is taking pictures of their bike and posting them online. To make the picture stand out from the rest it’s good to make it look as professional as possible. A picture of your bike leaning against a gate or a wall can be very artistic and sometimes just the bike lying on the ground can be atmospheric but to make it look professional with the bike standing up, seemingly on it’s own is hard to do.

You can use a stick and wedge it in the frame somewhere but then that is visible in the picture or restricts the angle of the shot. you can get a friend to hold the bike until the last second before releasing it while you take the shot before the bike falls over. For studio shots wires can be used then photoshopped out afterwards, but that’s a lot of faff so what’s the solution?

I was contacted by Shadow Stands after commenting on one of their Instagram posts @shadowstands020 and they sent me two of the stands, one standard size and one a little longer to cope with the higher bottom bracket height of a gravel bike.

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The stand consists of a triangle of plastic with a notch to put the pedal spindle into at one end and a serrated end at the other for gripping the ground and simply that’s it. you lean the bike on it and it stands up on it’s own and is almost completely invisible.

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It looks like the bike is defying gravity and makes picture taking of a stand alone bike a breeze.

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on stage

so, will this improve your riding style? not really. Will it enable you to out climb all your riding partners? definitely not. Will it make your bike pictures look 100% better and make them literally stand out amongst all the others? I’d say yes. Just don’t drop it in a pile of leaves because you’ll spend 15 minutes looking for it like i did!

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outstanding in the woods

you can get custom engraving and stands that fit under the bottom bracket shell too. the stand and all packaging is recyclable. you can find more information on ShadowStand’s website here ShadowStand.com