Motorcycle Photography: In the introduction to this blog I said I would post up some examples of motorcycle photography and offer a brief explanation of how the shot was taken. Photographs like the one above are relatively simple to take provided you have the right equipment.
A shot like this is pleasing to the eye because of the limited depth of field, in other words the shot gets increasingly more blurred and out of focus, the further away the subject is from the lens.
This effect can really only be accomplished by using a digital SLR with a lens set on a wide aperture, say f4.5 or less. Focus on the closest point of interest, in this case the letter H in the word Triumph.
Lighting is always a key factor to consider in taking any photograph. In this picture a reflector was used positioned lower left to bounce some light and some fill in flash was added off camera upper left.
Positioning a flash gun on top of the camera is never a good idea as the light will then lack any ‘direction’. The easiest and cheapest way to overcome this is to use a flash sync lead to move the flash gun off camera.
The flash was not fired directly at the bike as that would be too harsh. Instead it was fitted with a small diffuser to soften the light. You might also need to consider dialling down the flash guns power rating to avoid ‘nuking’ your subject at close quarters and over exposing the picture.
Below is another example using the same photography technique. This time the focus was locked onto the closest edge of the bikes ‘cheese grater’ air cover and then the picture is recomposed to throw the background out of focus.
Triumph Thunderbird 900 