Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge Motorcycle Photography?

Anyone want to share tips or tricks?

Most of my shots are snap shots.. not photographs, if you know what I mean.
I need some help.
I know you need to capture the eyes, so I just this translates to the head light.

Here's what I have, but it's not "brochure" material at all.


Leaving my drive way would help, just need some help capturing the subject.

Share your work!!!

Some of the best bike shots I have ever seen are of a part of the bike. Like a 45 angle of tank badge and cocked handlebar close up but a great scene in the background.

I can't do it either, but know exactly what you mean. I take a pic of a bike and its just a bike. Nothing special.

Avoid sunlight , best light is an overcast , but bright day .
Avoid busy backgrounds , keep it clean , accentuates the subject .
A good backdrop for bike photos is an older industrial motif , bricks , rusty steel , ect . and is a good contrast to a modern machine .
Get a tripod .
Get into yer right brain and be creative .

Also take shots from low positions too. Most are taken from a standing position which is not a cool.

Best thing to do is look in a brochure! Don't copy but it will give you the angles.
If you have a digital, take a LOT of pictures!! Practice makes perfect.

Clay

OK , it's back - analyzing the photo of the nice blue bike above , see how the blue and green seem to clash ? The front wheel should be turned INTO the field . See the line delineating the blue and white on the tank ? Well , it would be cool to repeat that with a 50/50 field of say , deep blue water and bright sky - now ya see ? The magic is all in the COMPOSITION , most digital cameras will correct for you , given a good image .

Not that I feel I'm a pro, but in my past experiences I've learned that low angle shots are generaly better than (as one other poster noted) standing shots. The other thing is background. What is behind your subject can be very distracting. Here's a shot I took not to long ago that I have received some good comments on. Hope this helps, Paw.

[image][/image]

rule of thirds is a good rule. google it if you aren't sure what it means

use good lines through the photograph. you try to make your bike look good, right, by not putting weird items on it that screw up the lines? same thing with photos. make it flow.

interest. take a photo from an angle, or a closeup, or something that draws attention, but isn't obscure.

background. when you're framing, notice what is going on in the background, and particularly in reflections, because your bike may have chrome, or shiny paint. i see so many photos (and have taken some, unavoidably) where you can see the person taking the photo in a reflection. use the reflections to your advantage, if you can, like something oblique that will catch the landscape, rather than you squatting next to the bike, lol

Hi, George. Firstly, what make/model of camera do you have? Although it's not impossible to take good photo's with a basic point-n-shoot, having some control over the exposure of a shot goes a long way. If you let us know what you've got, we can give you specific advice. Incidentally, you mention leaving your drive; personally, I don't think you have to. That wall's a perfect backdrop for a photo. Think contrasts: shiny new piece of engineering, worn old wall. Man-made object, natures patina. Not knowing much about the weather in SC (Southern Carolina?), I'm guessing that you have an autumn (based on the shot with the 2 bikes in). This is good. In fact, the time and day you took those shots are almost ideal. The First (America only) shot was either took on another day or a lot earlier in the day. Not good; the sun is directly overhead. Is it even the same place?

Echoing what others have said:

1. bright sunlight washes everything out. Basically, you want shadows. These give photos more a feeling of being alive, rather than just an picture.

2. The background is as important as the subject. A plain background means attention is given to the subject.

3. The rule of thirds: basically, don't put the subject of your shot in the middle of the picture.

4. A cheap tripod's barely better than no tripod. Buy a used, named brand (Manfrotto, Slik, others). You'll also need a head. Again, don't buy cheap. Alternatively, balance your camera on a wall, car, etc. Put a cloth underneath it to protect against scratches.

5. You often see (mainly in films), photograpers/artists join the thumb and index fingers on both hands up to form a rectangle. They're basically creating a "frame" and composing the picture before they even get near a camera.

6. Find your subject and then, if you can, walk round it. Find the right background. Then, look left, right, high and low. Where gives the best potential image? Shoot from there.

7. I (partially) disagree with another comment about just taking lots of pictures; you don't learn anything, you just get lucky. Creating images (as opposed to taking pictures) requires 2 skills, creative and technical. The technical is knowing how to use your camera properly to capture the image as you see it. With this in mind, take a notebook and, when taking photo's, make a note of the time, date, weather conditions, location, etc. Then, against the frame number (ie, the number of the photograph) make a note of your camera settings. For example shot 1: F8, 1/15, no flash. Take the picture. Shot 2 should then be (for eg) F11, 1/15 and shot 3 should be F5.6, 1/15. In other words, you're only changing 1 thing at a time. THEN take lots of pictures!!!
Back home, you can then compare the results against your settings and decide what worked and what didn't.
(For explanation of the F number, do a search for F stops. The 1/15 refers to the time the shutter's open, in this case, 1/15th of a second. The 2 numbers are generally referred to as 'exposure'. It's not difficult to understand; the skill comes in using them effectively to create the image that you want.)

8. If you don't feel you're creative enough, "borrow" someone else's shot. Find an image you like, recreate it and then photograph it yourself. This will enable you to just concentrate on the camera settings, rather than worrying about composition, etc. The ability to compose images will come.

9. Look at my photo's (in the link) for ideas.

10. Enjoy.

Kinda ironic that someone nicknamed Picasso is asking about making nice pictures!!!

Another tip, learn how to process pictures in photoshop, I don't mean adding flares and cheesy filters, but processing an image for contrast and color is a must, specially in digital photography. If you have Photoshop learn how to process in LAB not RGB.

A while back a member here posted some awesome picures but weren't processed; I took the liberty of doing a quick pass and the difference was huge, I sent them back to him so he could compare before and after, I think he liked them quite a bit.

If there is enough demand I can write a quick tutorial on how to do this and post it as a PDF.

Fair play, they aint *that* bad...but when you can pick up a decent one 2nd hand for not a lot more than a cheap one new...
Or try a monopod. Or a bean bag.

Of course, if your hands are steady...

The way I see it if youre using a digital camera you can just take every picture from every angle and then page through them later and see which ones turned out good and try to replicate it. I love the low angles...heres one that I post way too much on here

Nice trash can !

What trash can?






Rule of Thirds... check
Interesting, but not distracting background... check
RGB>LAB>RGB color correction... check
No cheesy filters... check.

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PM sent.

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Is that oil spot from YOUR bike?

I think he's referring to Lab Color mode. There's a rudimentary description in PhotoShop Help. I use RGB myself; displays and prints very well.

Lab provides the largest color gamut for editing color. RGB is for what a monitor can create and CMYK is what your printer can produce. These are totally different, but the same to the naked eye. Printing in RGB is kind of wanky. Posting CMYK on the web has too much information. Convert to RGB and you can have a larger image for the same amount of band width.

This is a photo taken in June near Valley of Fire in Nevada.
http://s272.photobucket.com/albums/jj187/dancorrigan/?action=view&current=IMG_0119.jpg [image]http://s272.photobucket.com/albums/jj187/dancorrigan/?action=view&current=IMG_0119.jpg[/image]

I read a how-to on car photography and the writer recommended shooting vehicles with a telephoto lens, to just keep the focal point on the vehicle.